Trevor waited for a response from the boy who had often thought battle a glorious endeavor.
Jorgie mumbled only, “Yes.”
The vehicle took a particularly nasty jolt and a side of the van bent in from an exterior impact. Trevor glanced out and saw, through the tiny windows at the rear, a motorcycle spin out of control into a mob of dog-sized worms. A second later that bike detonated in a flash of yellow and orange.
Trevor turned his attention forward. He saw Armand balancing his FAMAS in one hand while steering his bike with the other. The man shot a flying thing that tried to dive bomb the formation.
Inside the van, Hauser—struggling with keeping control on the rocks, uneven ground, and bodies passing beneath the wheels—said, “We’re almost to the front entrance. Get ready.”
At that moment one of the heavy cavalry riders in bulky body armor tumbled end over end, separating person from bike. Trevor saw something akin to a horned turtle standing where the rider had been but he caught only a glimpse as the spearhead continued on at a rapid pace leaving both the turtle-thing and the rider to their fates.
Trevor leaned forward to see above the fray. And yes, there loomed the massive Temple of Voggoth beneath boiling black clouds.
“Just drop us off, Rick. Then you and the rest get out of here.”
“Sir, I signed on for the whole ride.”
“Thanks, but you can’t help us inside and if you stay outside you’ll be overrun. Get back to the main lines and help Armand and Alexander keep the fight going.”
BAM!
The van flew and landed on the driver’s side. Crates, buckets, Jorgie’s cot, ammo boxes, canned food, Trevor and JB all fell in a jumble against the toppled side of the van which slid and spun several more feet. From outside came the roar of something very big. And gunfire.
Trevor immediately found his son. Jorgie appeared dazed but in one piece. Then he leaned forward to check on Rick Hauser and the Royal Marine. With the exception of the indignity of having fallen on top of one another, the two men up front remained uninjured.
“Something big came out of the ground,” Hauser said as he struggled to right himself “We have got to get you moving. Is JB okay?”
“Yeah. We’re ready.”
“Wait here,” the Marine said as he produced an SA80 bullpup assault rifle and reached up for the passenger door. “I’ll pop open the back.”
Hauser used his hands to help hoist the soldier up and out through the passenger side door that was now at the ‘top’ of the overturned vehicle.. Then he, too, went in that direction.
More gunfire rang out from the immediate vicinity as Armand’s riders dealt with whatever had flipped the van.
Trevor found an HK MP5 and urgently grasped it in one hand. Jorgie did something similar, except he grasped his wrapped bunny albeit with even more urgency.
The rear of the van opened. Hauser motioned them out while the stoic Royal Marine stood nearby pointing his gun at something. Judging by the way he craned his neck, that something was rather tall.
“Father…”
“C’mon, Jorgie. It’s time to go.”
Trevor took his son’s hand and led them from the overturned van.
The air felt cold. Far colder than even a Russian summer should feel; cold enough to see white puffs from Hauser’s mouth as he encouraged their exit. Trevor suspected the chill came from a blackened sky that had blocked out the sun in that area probably for more than a decade.
Now that night had fallen, not even the faintest of glimmers tried to poke through the rolling clouds. No stars shone. But light did come from the periodic flashes of lightning. Those flashes—as brilliant as they could be—felt sterile, too: less like a force of nature and more like the snap of a photographer’s bulb.
The motorcyclists had successfully cut a path through the mob of combatants. While that mob still raged 50 meters away to the west, the immediate area surrounding the fallen van was clear. Save for the thing sprouting from the ground.
It wavered in the air like a warped version of Jack’s beanstalk, stretching a hundred meters into the pitch-black sky and swaying side to side. Trevor saw scales and pulsing veins and slithering eel-like parasites all along the thick body. At the top lived a triangle of bone and tendons that opened wide and screamed a high-pitched holler into the night.
“Around the front—move it, you hear?” The Marine ordered as he fired a burst at the tall creature. Hauser acted the part of usher and shuffled Trevor and JB away.
The van had come to rest 20 yards from the short but wide flight of granite-like steps that led to a set of fibrous doors.
A Spider Sentry fired at Armand’s cavalry from atop those stairs. Bodies of several of the gray-skinned Ogres lay nearby. Armand had kept his promise to get them to the temple. Unfortunately, two bodies clad in riders’ leather lay on the hard ground at the foot of the stairs and several more carried on the fight despite serious wounds.
“Move! Move!” The Marine shouted as he covered their advance to the temple.
The giant creature struck down. It’s triangular head split open and engulfed the armored van. A moment later the creature straightened to its full height and spat the car with great force. It tumbled through the sky and crashed into the mob of monsters.
The orb that served as body and head to the Spider Sentry at the temple doors cracked and withered from a string of bullets. Its spindly legs lost strength and the creature collapsed.
Armand wasted no time.
“Perimeter! Form a perimeter!”
When the beanstalk-thing struck again it was met by licks of fire from a flamethrower. Its ‘head’ burned like a grotesque candle, melting from the top down.
As for the rest of Voggoth’s pets, machine gun fire and tossed grenades from the half-circle of human defenders kept the army of monsters at bay for the time being while Armand slapped a bundle of explosives on the temple doors.
“Fire in the hole!”
Trevor crouched to the ground and covered JB’s head. Hauser provided his body as another layer of shielding over the boy. A dull explosion slapped the air and a man-sized hole in the fan-like doors appeared—leading to darkness.
Hauser tapped Trevor’s arm and asked, “Are you sure you couldn’t use some back up in there?”
“I’m sure. Here, you could use this more than me,” and he handed the MP5 machine pistol to the man who had been his personal pilot for so many years.
“Good luck to you, boss,” Hauser took the gun and then ruffled Jorgie’s hair. “You take care of your dad.”
JB returned the gesture with a sweet but unsure smile.
The entry point secure, Trevor hurried up the stairs while Hauser joined the ranks of warriors at the perimeter. The Marine covered Trevor and his boy but he did not have enough bullets for all the monsters that would soon flood in.
A girl manning the defensive line fell over with a spear-like projectile through her stomach. The arm of a man wearing a blue racing suit caught fire and he rolled on the black ground screaming. A bike exploded sending wheels, handle bars, and an exhaust assembly smashing into the temple walls.
Trevor hurried toward the hole in the blasted door with his son in tow. He met Armand at the top of the stairs and said, “Thank you.”
“I come with you.”
“No. You can’t help. Out here—this is where I need the warriors.”
A shout from the perimeter warned of a pending charge by the nightmares. The rat-tat-tat of heavy gunfire accentuated the point. The Royal Marine standing by Trevor’s side fired a burst of bullets at something in the distance.
Trevor added, “Get your people out of here. Keep fighting, no matter what happens.”
Armand shook his head in frustration, but only for a moment. He placed a hand on Trevor’s shoulders.
“Good luck to you, Trevor Stone. Whatever happens, it has been fun, yes?”
Trevor nodded.
Armand yelled to his force, “Saddle
up! We will withdraw back to our lines!”
An explosion from across the battlefield suggested Alexander managed to get the heavy artillery into the fight, yet Trevor knew Voggoth’s reinforcements would keep coming—and coming—and coming unless he could do something. Or Jorgie could.
Armand descended the stairs. The perimeter of biker cavalry collapsed in an orderly fashion to their rides. Hauser found the back of a bike, as did the Royal Marine.
Trevor and his son slipped through the hole in the door and entered the temple of Voggoth.
The sounds from outside—motorcycles racing away, guns blazing, artillery shells exploding, and all manner of monsters howling and groaning—disappeared as Trevor and JB entered the temple. The hole in the door remained and the light of fire and lightning flashed but none of it shined into the large chamber, as if some sheath still hung over the blasted door that kept sounds and light at bay.
Father and son entered a great empty space that stretched away forever both across the featureless floor and overhead. A putrid smell carried on the humid air; a smell Trevor knew too well from the cadaver-filled cities in the days after Armageddon.
Two massive orbs broke the blackness of the chamber’s heights. They hung from the hidden ceiling by an unknown mechanism; floating in the void. Each measured hundreds of feet in diameter and appeared made of some clear material such as glass or polystyrene.
“Father…”
At first they were hard to notice due to the colorless background of the temple’s ceiling. But Trevor did see a familiar sight; something he had seen on a parallel Earth.
Inside each orb lived a swirling mass of living black cloud. The creatures pushed against their confinement in an attempt to break loose. Trevor thought he saw the silhouette of faces inside the mist. Screaming, angry faces, but that might be a fantasy conjured by his nightmare memories of the things.
No sound came from their futile efforts to escape but a shimmering halo of energy crackled from the surface of each of the gigantic spheres. That energy—like electricity—arced between the balls like some arcane power source in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory.
For a split second—a blink of the eye—Trevor saw some huge, formless mass lurking between those spheres; something siphoning the energy from the imprisoned Nyx.
In that instant the reality of the situation—or at least as close to it as his simple human mind could comprehend—filled his soul with dread. A shiver ran along his spine; fear as cold and as real as he had sensed since that first day when monsters arrived on Earth.
He had buried thoughts of this moment beneath the battle to get here; beneath a single-mindedness focus on arriving at the objective but he had refused to fully consider what waited at the end of the road.
Voggoth.
For years he contemplated the nature of this entity. The thing that had orchestrated his torture, the invasion, the mutation of millions of human beings, the collapse of civilization. The puppet master pulling the strings of the Gods.
“Father—it is very cold in here. Very empty.”
Trevor felt insignificant standing there in the massive hall filled with nothing. He did not feel like a conquering Emperor or a hero for a species. He felt like a lonely, weak, meaningless man. Nothing more. An overwhelming urge to turn and run nearly overcame his senses; nearly sent him into a blind panic. But just when that feeling neared critical mass, he felt the hand of his son grab his hand.
His heart continued to beat at a fast clip; each exhale nearly turned into a gasp, but Trevor held his ground.
Barely audible above the crackle of energy, Trevor heard a rhythmic click, click, click.. The sound of footsteps moving across the darkness. Louder. Louder.
A human form materialized from the dark and approached at a slow pace. Trevor saw the outline of a man dressed in casual clothes and strolling forward as easily as a favorite son coming home to a welcoming family. With each step the stranger took, Trevor saw he was no stranger at all.
“Hello, Trev.”
The face—the hair—a voice that lingered on the edge of a joke with each word. Trevor recognized it all despite not having seen Danny Washburn since the first winter of the invasion, nearly eleven years, when his friend had disappeared into a hellish vortex on the grounds of SUNY Binghamton.
“What’s wrong? Not happy to see a familiar face?”
Trevor remembered sending Danny and Bird and several others on a mission to destroy one of the gateways, one that belonged to Voggoth’s realm. Danny had constructed a fertilizer bomb onboard an 18-wheeler. While Nina’s group distracted the gateway’s guardians, Danny and Bird delivered the bomb. It exploded, despite the sudden materialization of a Goat Walker.
To his surprise, the Gateway did not simply vaporize in the blast. Instead, the detonation created a screaming whirlpool of reality, sucking away everything in the event horizon to someplace different.
Danny had pleaded for help. Trevor did nothing.
“I can understand why you’re not so thrilled to see me,” the body of Danny Washburn said. “I guess you probably managed to forget about ol’ Danny after all this time.”
“Father, who is this man?”
“Dan—Danny?”
“Yep, old Danny. Your pal. You stood back and watched me get dragged to Hell. But hey, I guess it was all part of the equation, right? Sacrifice some for the good of the whole, isn’t that how you do things?”
“Trevor! Help us for Christ’s sake! You can’t leave us! Trevor! Help me! Help me!”
It seemed as if that horrible day happened all over again. He could hear the cries for help. He could see the spinning vortex first distorting then pulling in Danny Washburn and the rest of the team—and then disappearing, leaving behind a hole in the Earth that slowly turned white as a raging snow storm rushed to fill the scar.
“There was nothing I could have done,” Trevor mumbled in a daze.
“Well, of course not. I mean, you have to believe that or how would you be able to sleep? But, say, who cares. That’s what all of us have been for, right? Me, Reverend Johnny, Tolbert, Bird, Sheila Evans, Sal Corso, Garrett McAllister—we’re all Trevor Stone’s toy soldiers to be thrown into the meat grinder. An expendable resource. But as long as those armies are on the march it’s all for the greater good.”
Trevor turned his head away from Danny and studied the hard floor as if answers might lurk there.
“I do what I have to do.”
”How easy that is to say,” the voice of Danny Washburn replied. “Tell me, Trevor, did you have to crucify those Chaktaw bodies? What purpose did that serve? Was that something you had to do? Or was it something you wanted to do.”
“I—I don’t know…”
“Don’t lie. Don’t stand here in front of your son and lie about who you are. You’re a tyrant. A conqueror. It’s in your blood.”
“I fight to save my people,” Trevor still refused to meet Danny’s eyes.
“Did the Trevor of that parallel Earth fight to save his people? No. He was an invader. He killed for fun. He ruled with an iron fist. He used Nina as his plaything. And guess what, buddy, he was the exact same as you. The same hair color, the same eyes, the same height. The same DNA. You’re a killer, Trevor.”
“My father is not a killer!”
Danny said, “Ask the people of New Winnabow.”
“I had to—“
“You had to send your canine army to tear them to pieces? The great leader showed his wisdom by choosing slaughter! What about the Governor of California? You remember, the one you murdered with a missile strike. How did you justify that?”
“We—we had to destroy their leadership. If any part remained it would have—“
“It would have clouded your mission. It would have brought a voice of dissent to the table and you dared not have that. Nothing must stand in the way of the war. No negotiation. No quarter. Just slaughter without end and Trevor Stone ruling over it all.”
Trevor felt wea
k. With each word he saw the faces, the aftermath, the ruins of those who had met their fate by his hand.
“Congratulations, Trevor. Genghis Kahn and Alexander the Great have nothing on you!”
“I had no choice!” Trevor yelled and his voice echoed through the endless chamber. The pulses of energy from the spheres containing the inky-black Nyx crackled loud like a blast of lightning and thunder. “The stakes were too high! All of the world on my shoulders!”
“Poor Trevor, no choice at all…”
Trevor’s yell turned to a sob, “I never wanted this! None of it. I did not choose this path. I—I…”
Trevor clasped his head with both hands. The body of Danny Washburn stepped closer like a shark in blood-scented waters lunging for the kill.
“I can release you from it all. I can make the guilt and the pain go away. Old Danny boy knows a few secrets, you see. You listen to me, Trev, and I can make it right as rain.”
“Father!” Jorgie pointed at Danny and shouted, “Don’t listen to him! He is empty, Father! He is as empty and dead as everything in this place!”
As he shouted, the nine year old boy—without realizing it—stepped in Washburn’s direction. In that moment, the thing that looked like Danny Washburn grew a scowl on his face and hurriedly retreated a step. In fear.
Trevor witnessed that fear. Everything changed.
“I can make it all right for you, Trevor. Do what I ask and I promise you, no more pain. I can do more than save your people, I can make them immortal. I can make you immortal, Trevor.”
But the bribe felt flat. Trevor had seen the thing falter in the face of a little boy and with that falter, the creature wearing the cloak of Danny Washburn lost its power to bully or persuade.
“Is that what you tell all the races? How many ears have you whispered that promise into? I’ll bet you told the Feranites they were special, that you would help them. How did that work out?
Washburn glanced from Trevor to Jorgie and said, “Are you sure you don’t want to listen to my offer, Trevor? Say, maybe I can even throw in the woman you love. Oh, I’m sorry, the boy doesn’t know, does he? He doesn’t know that you don’t love his mother.”
Beyond Armageddon V: Fusion Page 38