“[Your silence does you no credit],” T’kool’ha said, her mind-voice chiding. “[Why did I marry a warrior like you?]”
R’thugh’cruan moved to embrace her. “[Because you wanted someone who was as ferocious as you.]”
Lacking taboos against such things, they would have begun mating at once if not for the fact that R’thugh’cruan found himself embracing empty air. His confusion was palpable and he looked to his fellow warriors only to find that they, too, had vanished. Feeling a creeping sense of dread moving up his several nervous systems, R’thugh’cruan teleported back to the rocky cavern that he shared with the rest of his family unit.
Empty.
He checked his children’s place of learning.
Empty.
He checked on the beings that had birthed him.
Empty.
He checked the cities of every part of the Kastro’vaal empire.
All empty.
R’thugh’cruan was alone in the universe. Terrified and needing contact with someone, anyone, of intelligence comparable to his own, he attempted to visit worlds other than those inhabited by his people.
He couldn’t. An invisible force wrapped itself around him and bent space so that, whenever he came close to leaving Kastro’vaal territory, he found himself back at its heart. His telepathic skills were not well-developed, but he felt the malevolent mocking glee his captor took in torturing him. Like an ant being burned by a child with a magnifying glass, R’thugh’cruan was the plaything of something cosmic. Even suicide was denied him, for he found himself compelled to live when death became more appealing than life. Still, his captor chose not to appear.
Years, decades, and even centuries passed until R’thugh’cruan went mad from isolation. In time, even that passed. Insanity offered no comfort to the isolated mind, and a terrible hate-filled sanity replaced it. I had cautioned Mercury against going sane, but it was not until I experienced R’thugh’cruan’s memories that the full truth of my statement became clear. True sanity was infinitely worse than madness.
It was on the steps of the Grand Temple of Yog-Sothoth, R’thugh’cruan’s mind twisted beyond recognition and dulled with homemade poisons, that his captor made himself known. It took several minutes for the piss-drunk Kastro’vaal to realize that what he saw was not a hallucination.
Looking upon the figure, R’thugh’cruan wanted to vomit up the meager meal in his two stomachs. The Kastro’vaal had been a cosmopolitan and lusty race, but the thing before him was ghastly. It stood upon two legs and had two arms, with two circular sensory organs and a pyramid-shaped one between them. Another pair were on the side of its top ball-like appendage. The creature also wore patches of material about its body, covering its nakedness, an act which R’thugh’cruan found perverse.
I was jolted by the figure’s appearance into recovery of my memories. Staring at the stranger’s form, I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. I recognized the being standing before me and what shape he was wearing. Nyarlathotep had chosen my own body, my human one from Earth, to visit R’thugh’cruan. He even was wearing my old Remnant military uniform.
“Please allow me to introduce myself. I’m a man of wealth and taste,” Nyarlathotep said, laughing.
“[What?]” R’thugh’cruan asked, having no reason to get the joke that was perhaps directed at me.
“[A message to one who listens through you,]” Nyarlathotep said.
Richard Pickman Junior had played many Pre-Rising songs over the years of our acquaintance, and that sentence reminded me of one. I understood what the Other God was doing, and it terrified me that he was showing me a message through the suffering of an alien being millions of years gone.
“[I have come to speak with you],” Nyarlathotep said, chuckling. “[I hope I didn’t keep you waiting long.]”
“[What?]” R’thugh’cruan could only ask again, more confused than I was.
“[I am here to provide you answers],” Nyarlathotep said, looking at his watch. “[Provided I am entertained].”
“[Is this all a game to you!]” R’thugh’cruan screamed as loud as he could, ready to strangle the god where he stood.
“[Yes],” Nyarlathotep said, putting his hands behind his back and holding them. “[For what else is life when you are immortal, indestructible, and all-knowing? Amusement is the highest virtue a being like me can aspire to.]”
R’thugh’cruan slumped down onto the blackened jagged stone of his dead city’s streets. “[Why, then? Just, why?]”
“[It was not I who destroyed your people],” Nyarlathotep said, looking down. “[You and your kind have provided me fleeting amusement on no less than three separate occasions. This alone would have guaranteed your survival for epochs to come, and I halted the evolution of no less than fifteen species that would have destroyed you to see how you might flower. Yet I am not alone in such power, and a being called Oroarchan erased your people from history.]”
“[Erased?]” R’thugh’cruan choked out.
“[You are ceasing to amuse me,]” Nyarlathotep said, frowning. “But yes, he consigned your species to oblivion as a stray extension of his mighty mind. Oroarchan, being a living color, feasts upon time, and yours fell victim to its massive hunger. Because of a joke you told me, the one you have experienced these past few million cycles, I created this dream-world for you to inhabit.]”
“[Kill me,]” R’thugh’cruan whispered. “[I beg you.]”
“[I could do that,]” Nyarlathotep said, turning around and giving a devil’s grin. “[Or, perhaps, I could teach you the secret of how to revive your people.]”
“[I’ll do anything!]” R’thugh’cruan shouted.
“[Oh, I do love when finite beings say that. They so rarely mean it.]” Nyarlathotep chortled. “[Your race lies with Yog-Sothoth now. In the Many-Angled Place, they live with the Hounds of Time and all the Never’Were and Might’Have’Beens which have been forced from time. Terrible things, even by my standards. Yet it is possible to return them to existence if one knows the right things.]”
“[Do you want me to kill someone? A million someones? I’ll do it,]” R’thugh’cruan’s voice shook with a desperate, irrational emotion long absent from his body—hope. He loved and loathed the horrific-looking alien thing that was speaking to him, simply because it was the first being he’d spoken to outside of his own thoughts in an age.
“[I suppose you could do that,]” Nyarlathotep said, shrugging. “[There is a dying world in the far future, a speck of dust whirling around a flicker of light spinning around Azathoth’s court. Its sole claim to fame is it will be where many Great Old Ones you know will lay their head to rest and dream grandiose thoughts for an afternoon. I will reincarnate you, billions of years from now, and give you the means to summon your species to inhabit this world. The only price will be the destruction of an already soon-dead race living upon it.]”
Oh no.
“[Sounds delightful. Let’s do this.]” R’thugh’cruan’s enthusiasm couldn’t be denied. Would I have done anything different in his place? No, of course not, for we were one and the same.
God help me.
“[A bargain is struck then,]” Nyarlathotep clasped his hands together. He then started talking to me, directly. “[You, John Henry Booth, will be the vessel for the Kastro’vaal’s return. When your body finishes its transformation into its soul’s past form, hastened by the amount of murder you perform, you will know what to do. You are the one who will destroy humanity and bring back an old race every bit as worthy or more of survival.]”
And somehow, I knew I would.
That was when I woke to the sound of gunfire.
Chapter Fifteen
Mercury and I lay in each other’s arms when the sounds of gunfire filled the air. They happened before the makeshift alarms we set up were triggered. A couple of explosions followed, the result of grenade traps we’d set.
“Shit!” Mercury said, jolting upwards.
I grabbed my homespun boxer
shorts and pants, sliding them both on in one clean motion before taking up my rifle. Heading out the tent flap, I saw the rest of our group had taken position behind supply boxes and was firing endless numbers of rounds into an oncoming horde of the living dead.
Reanimated, known as “West-boys” in Remnant lingo.
The Reanimated moved with an inexorable, cold shuffle of their rotting limbs, but this was a trick. They were unnatural things that did not need to obey the laws of physics. When they got close, they often displayed astounding speed and could perform feats of strength impossible for a living man or woman.
No one knew why the Reanimated existed. A scientist in the early twentieth century named Herbert West had reverse-engineered an alchemical formula in the Black Keys of Solomon to bring them about, but “naturally-occurring” Reanimated were a fact of life in the Wasteland. In the Tainted Zones and places where M-Rads were high, death could not hold the fallen, and they returned with an all-consuming hatred for life.
Reanimated were one of the rare exceptions to the creatures of the Rising having no real interest in humanity save as a bug to be squished or the occasional meal. While some necromancers like Doctor Ward or the Hasturians could control them, most were the relentless enemies of all life.
This particular horde of undead looked fresh. They wore the clothes of scavengers and Wasteland folk with fresh bullet holes and wounds from where someone had cut them down with conventional weapons. Their stink was repulsive, letting me know they’d been dead for weeks, and there was a wind coming from the tunnels below. It was their numbers that staggered me, though. There were nine or so creatures along the front row and hundreds more behind them. Someone had slaughtered an entire town, something humanity couldn’t afford to lose, just to bring the inhabitants back as weapons. The remainder of our group’s grenade traps went off and blew two dozen or so of the monsters apart but left barely a dent in their ranks.
We needed to flee.
Turning my head, I saw that the lightning storm was still ongoing. There was no escape the way we came.
“Shit,” I cursed aloud. “When it rains it pours.”
I would never admit it, but Reanimated terrified me. Every time I saw one of those horrific parodies of life, I couldn’t help but flash back to the massacre of Gamma Squad in the Black Cathedral. I had faced infinitely worse creatures both before and after, but they were the ones that made me wish I could flee. Stephen, Jimmy, Parker, and Garcia had all perished because I wasn’t strong enough to defend them.
“I hate West-boys!” Thom shouted, firing into the ranks of the undead with two pistols. Every bullet was a headshot and caused the Reanimated they struck to catch fire before falling to the ground, creating an inferno the others had to walk through. I’d have to ask Thom where he got his rounds.
Jessica was sitting behind a crate of boxes, firing an automatic machine gun filled with flamer rounds. The Remnant-designed ammunition was less effective than Thom’s shots, but as she released round after round of explosive ammunition into the left side of the horde, she crippled their movement. Jessica noticeably aimed at the Reanimated’s legs.
On the right side of the shambling assault, Bobbie had conjured her flaming whip anew but was commanding it with her mind to move like a snake far from her hands. The flaming serpent bisected Reanimated, set them on fire, and decapitated them, but seemed to grow weaker with each one slain.
August, meanwhile, was standing far behind the rest of the group working a powerful enchantment to the Gods of Ulther, moving his hands in elaborate, complex gestures and invoking the names of ancient Stygian (later Egyptian) gods mixed in with other deities of the Hyborian Age.
Something was happening as a result, but I couldn’t tell what. Any man could call on the Great Old Ones or gods of the Dreamlands, but it was a rare being who knew how to make them respond. I knew but a handful of chants compared to him and Mercury.
And yet the Reanimated still came.
The first few broke through the assault of my fellows and rushed forward, passing the others by and heading straight for me and Mercury. My lover was behind me, dressed in a plain shirt over her pants. Lifting my rifle up, I held it steady and blew the head clean off the first of my attackers. The next moved too fast for me to shoot, hissing and spewing blood from its pus-filled mouth.
I slammed that one across the face with the butt of my rifle before using it as a shield against the pouncing attack of a third. Mercury shot both in the side of the head, causing my ears to ring.
“Next time, warn me!” I shouted, dropping the two truly dead corpses to the ground.
“No time!” Mercury said, firing headshot after headshot into the undead crowd. I did the same, knowing this might be the last fight of our lives. Not every one of our bullets hit home, but enough of them did to hold the creatures in place.
No, that was a mistake. They weren’t held in place. They were walking in place. Men, women, children, and deformed mutant amalgamations were all pressing forward but unable to proceed. It was as if they’d struck an invisible barrier. Narrowing my eyes, I saw the Elder Sign hovering in the air.
A dark force was pounding against it and cracking it, but for the moment, it was holding against the terrible scourge descending upon us. Looking at the piles of corpses on the ground, I saw we’d slain close to fifty of the beasts.
Not even a drop in their ranks.
Jessica, Thom, Mercury, and I kept firing into their ranks for a minute longer but stopped when it was clear they weren’t accomplishing much. August, though, fell on the ground and took a series of deep breaths.
“You’re doing?” I asked, looking over at August.
August nodded. “It’s as powerful a magic as I can work without a sacrifice, human or animal. The University may call magic technology of the mind, but it functions like the appeasement of hungry gods. They drain my life every time I call on them when they don’t receive their offerings. Forgive me, but I don’t love any of you enough to give more than I already have.”
“And if we need more?” Thom asked, his face sweaty from combat.
“Then I suggest you figure out which one of you should die,” August said, shrugging. “I, for one, pick you.”
Thom made an obscene gesture back at him.
“Let’s put a pin in killing each other for the time being,” I said, staring at the horde. “Something is eroding the barrier. I can feel it.”
“Yes,” August said, breathing hard. “There is a more powerful presence behind this than I. Something that wants us dead.”
“Oh, what tipped you off? The herd of zombies?” Thom said.
August snorted. “Please, true zombies are completely different.”
I was ready to shoot all of my allies.
“How long do we have?” I asked.
“Five minutes,” August said, shaking his head. “With Mercury’s help, I might be able to strengthen the barrier to twenty.”
“And with the human sacrifice?” Thom asked.
“Bastard,” Bobbie snarled.
“Just asking,” Thom said, shrugging. “We’ve got the entire world at stake and I’m sure one of y’all would love to give your life for it.”
Jessica took a moment to give Thom the finger.
He just smiled back.
“Can Bobbie help strengthen August’s spell?” I asked.
Bobbie shook her head. “No, his sorcery is different from mine.”
Great. “Well, we better think of something since that’s not going to hold much longer.”
“Nice observation, Captain,” Thom grunted. “What other tidbits of wisdom would you like to share?”
Nope. Not all my allies. I was just going to shoot him.
“These creatures knew where we were,” Jessica grumbled. “It makes me think that firestorm outside was no accident.”
“You think they drove us to this cave?” Mercury asked.
“No, I think they were trying to kill us. This is Plan B.” Jes
sica clenched her teeth. “Anyway, you could, I dunno, wish ’em away, Auggie?”
August shook his head. “No. I can maybe summon something nasty to deal with them, but it’s a bad idea to bring something into reality unless you have complete control. I can’t guarantee such a thing as long as whoever is controlling these things is out there. Breaking a wizard’s control over a demon means said wizard getting eaten and shit out in short order.”
“And what a loss to the world that would be,” Thom said, looking at a naked four-year-old girl with her lower jaw missing. “Fucking West-boys.”
I could hear the gnashing, snarling, and hissing of the monstrous parodies of mankind just outside of the barrier. It was a reminder of just how fragile the difference between humans and monsters truly was. I didn’t know if their souls were trapped in their bodies or if they’d ever had souls to begin with, but the thought of becoming one of those things was a fate worse than becoming an Eye of Yog-Sothoth. I was tempted to give into the horror inside me if it allowed me to tear into those things and save our group.
Do it, Nyarlathotep whispered. Let out the Beast within.
No, I hissed. I’d rather die.
Then you will. Eventually.
“So, if we kill the wizard, the horde stops?” Mercury asked.
“That’s the size of it, yes,” August said. “I think. Magic is never really tame the same way science is. No matter what the University maintains.”
“Do you have any idea how far away this wizard might be?” I asked, the beginnings of a plan formulating in my head.
“Close,” August said, looking like he’d run for ten miles. “This kind of necromancy isn’t something you can do from a distance. That’s thousands of souls bound to their corpses, begging for the release of oblivion or to feed the dreams of their gods. If it’s anything human, it has to be right behind the horde or damn close to it.”
“And if it’s not remotely human?” I asked.
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