I sighed. “I encounter enough horrors in my daily life. I don’t need a game where I pretend to confront more.”
Richard shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. You read the book so you’re doomed anyway.”
“I’m not supposed to read the book?” I asked.
Richard shook his head. “You’re never supposed to read books in this game.”
I sighed. “Listen, Richard—”
“Shh,” Richard said, lifting a bunch of dice and throwing them. There were a lot of sixes. “A gigantic tentacle reaches through the door, grabs you, and drags you off to the Court of the Toad Monster King.”
“The what now?”
“I’d say you should roll your own dice, but you’d go insane and die before you can respond.” Richard then took a drink from the glass bottle containing his homebrewed sugary black beverage. Strangely, not an alcoholic one but something that had once been a popular soft drink.
“This is a stupid game,” I muttered. “There’s no way to win.”
“This game,” Richard said, raising a single six-sided dice, “isn’t about winning. Instead, like life, it’s about how you lose.”
“I don’t like to lose.”
Richard shook his head. “Then you’ve got a serious problem since you can’t beat the Great Old Ones. You can only impede them.”
I frowned, disliking the way this conversation was going. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“So how are things in Kingsport?” Richard asked, which was confusing because he died before I ever set foot in that city.
I shook my head. “Terrible. Since the destruction of the Marsh Family and the partial takeover of the city by the Remnant, it’s been nothing but a rush of settlers trying to make as much money from the new trading opportunities as possible.”
“Money is good,” Richard said. “For humans, at least.”
“Maybe,” I said, sighing. “I’ve got plenty of work as a caravaneer. I’ve also supplemented my income with bounties.”
The actual Wild West had never been big on the “dead or alive” method of law enforcement, but the Post-Rising era didn’t have the luxury of a central government. Families of victims and towns putting prices on the head of murderers was about as good as it got in the wasteland.
“You should see if they need you as a sheriff,” Richard said. “You’d do a decent job, I think.”
I snorted. “God no.”
“Why is that?”
“They’d probably give it to me,” I said, taking a drink of my sarsaparilla. “New Arkham got a big wake-up call last year. One that’s gotten settlers moving from the city out into the wasteland. Lots of conflict with the Dunwych and other tribals, but that’s to be expected. Mercury has plenty of business as a doctor, caravaneer or not. Really, we could live on her salary alone.”
“And why don’t you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t like people getting too close. People respect your privacy on the trail. I also have to kill fewer people in shoot-outs.”
“Ah,” Richard said. “High noon duels a thing in Kingsport?”
“I don’t think anyone really fought duels like that in the Old West,” I said. “I think they just tried to shoot at each other. It’s the same in the New East.”
Richard smiled a toothy grin. “I always wanted to be a cowboy. I ended up a dogboy.”
“And that’s no bull,” I said, smiling. I missed Richard. “Jackie misses you.”
“I doubt that,” Richard said. “I’d be a reminder of what she’s becoming.”
“That wasn’t so frightening with you around.”
Richard was silent. “So how is the whole business with the Unimaginable Horror thingy?”
I blinked, aware I was dreaming, but suddenly more … awake. “Richard? Is that you? Is your ghost visiting me?”
“No, I’m just a dream,” Richard said, knocking over my figure on the board game. “Of course, who’s to say—”
“Don’t,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve had enough from Nyarlathotep trying to convince me reality and imagination are one and the same.”
Richard chuckled. “I guess he would know.”
I stared at the fallen figure before me. “I’ve made a deal to try to get my humanity back, but I don’t trust the people who made the promise.”
“You can always do what old Ephraim Waite did and steal the body of a human.”
“What?”
“Deep One hybrid who screwed up the life of one of my relatives. He switched his mind with his daughter then her husband, keeping him as a concubine in his daughter’s body. It’s the kind of thing that happens all the time with wizards.”
“That’s … horrifying,” I said, staring at him.
“Yeah, Freud has got nothing on Old Ephraim,” Richard said. “It worked, though. He got to be human again. Too bad he was never human in where it really mattered.”
I stared at him. “This is where you tell me it’s OK to become a monster as it’s still me.”
“Oh hell no!” Richard said. “The mind is affected by alcohol, drugs, and lack of sleep. How do you think it’s affected by changing your fucking species? I crave the flesh of the dead and think arcane weird thoughts brought about by the ghouls’ racial memory. I may pretend otherwise, but I’m less human than if I really was a dog.”
I stared at him. “Thank you for that bit of honesty.”
“I am, however, sick of watching you piss and moan over being a monster, though. Either shit or get off the pot. Accept you want to dwell in wonder and glory forever as one of Azathoth’s court or die as a human being. You can’t do both.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“Then a monster you shall be.”
I closed my eyes. “So be it.”
Richard smirked. “That’s the spirit.”
I took a deep breath. “I don’t think Marcus Whately is actually trying to destroy the world either.”
“No, he’s trying to prevent it from being destroyed,” Richard said.
“Huh?” I asked, staring. “Are you supposed to represent what my unconscious has decided?”
“Sure, if that’s what you want. He figured out long ago, though, that the Faceless Ones are trying to raise the Unimaginable Horror from its prison in the Tower of Zhaal. Now he’s working to stop them.”
“Why are the people at Miskatonic University trying to stop him?”
“Marcus’s plan depends on freeing the Unimaginable Horror to stop it from getting free.” Richard shrugged.
“Then they’re right. He’s a madman.”
“It will get free in a few centuries anyway,” Richard said. “Nothing is eternal compared to the Great Old Ones, and they can’t shore up its prison without Zhaal. Anyway, the people at the University are prepared for the Horror being freed in a few centuries.”
“How’s that?”
“They believe once the Horror is freed, it will wash the world clean of all life. The gigantic mother of all living colors will suck the Deep Ones, ghouls, and humans dry before leaving a water-covered world that will evolve in fascinating new ways. The survivors at Miskatonic will project their minds into the future to join the Yithians in possessing new species.”
“Those murderous bastards,” I growled.
“Only Armitage and the Great One,” Richard said. “Even then, they’re more afraid of Marcus Whateley summoning his father to deal with the situation than of the Unimaginable Horror destroying the world. Marcus is the child of Yog-Sothoth and the brother of Katryn of the Dunwych.”
Katryn. Now there was a name I hadn’t heard in a while. “So, can the Horror be put back in its prison if freed?”
“If anyone can do it, Marcus can,” Richard said. “He’s not trying to build a new world, just trying to preserve this old one. Marcus has faith humanity can build a life on this awful wasted rock.”
“Can we?”
Richard said. “No, humanity is going to be dead in a few generations.”
>
I thought about Gabriel, Anita, and Jackie. “Goddammit. It’s not fair.”
“Humanity can change, John,” Richard said. “It might become something new that can survive, or it might just fade away and be nothing more than a memory. That doesn’t mean the experience wasn’t worth it.”
“It’s how you lose,” I muttered.
Richard nodded.
I stared at the monster figurines and picked up one that looked like a Kastro’vaal. “I had a dream that my father, me in a past-life maybe, was the sole survivor of a dead race. Nyarlathotep said he might be the key to destroying humanity but saving his own race.”
Richard picked up the piece. “Reincarnation isn’t the only thing that happens to the soul—”
“Souls exist?” I asked.
“After a fashion.” Richard shrugged. “Yog-Sothoth exists in all times and spaces. He keeps a record of everyone and everything. He is a part of us and separate. We also all have dream-selves. So maybe you are an alien reborn.”
“Maybe I am,” I said. “Will I destroy humanity?”
“If Nyarlathotep wanted humanity gone, it would be,” Richard said. “You may not have a choice if humanity or the Kastro’vaal live or die, but you have a choice as to how you react.”
“Unless my brain changes with my body.”
“Then it’s not you anymore and not your problem.”
That’s when I woke up to the sounds of explosions.
Chapter Twenty-One
I jolted violently from my dream and went for my gun. Mercury had an equally dramatic reaction to the sudden assault. She fell right out of the bed and was staring around at her surroundings like she couldn’t quite believe what was going on. Then, without hesitation, she grabbed the twin shotguns under the bed and tossed me one.
“We need to know what’s happening,” I said, sliding out of the bed and going to the window.
“No shit!” Mercury shouted, heading to the front door of our room.
Staring out the window, I caught a glimpse of a slice of hell on Earth. It was not a sign of the Rising, though. The Rising had brought countless demons and abominations every bit as terrible as the ones in Dante’s Inferno, but this, unfortunately, was an old evil. One that had been with mankind since the very beginning. War. The oceans had belched forth an army of the pure-blooded bibulous gray-skinned Deep Ones. It was no simple raid.
It was as Bobbie said—they’d come to kill their part-human kin. They seemed to stretch out from the town to the coastline, a hideous swarm of warrior mermen with a pair of mystically enslaved shoggoths and twenty-foot-tall Cthulhuoid horrors warped by magic into the image of R’lyeh’s lord. Men, women, and children of human as well as Deep One lineage were dragged from their homes by the invaders before being put to the sword. The attacking Deep Ones did not spare a single person they found, killing them in horrifying ways and sacrificing the efficiency of organized military tactics for unorganized slaughter.
It was to the credit of Insmaw’s people that they did not stand still for this massacre. Despite being hopelessly outnumbered and outmatched, they had been living in fear of assault by their brothers for decades. The townsfolk used pistols, rifles, homemade dynamite, and even farming or kitchen equipment to kill as many attackers as they could. The Insmaw folk were not without their own magic either. I saw Bobbie casting a spell above the rooftop of the church.
A glow encircled one of the shoggoths and the creature turned against the Deep Ones around it, causing many to start screaming as the gelatinous, black oozing things began devouring parts of the attacking army. One thing that stuck in my head as I turned away from the scene was that the freed shoggoth didn’t harm any of the townsfolk as it began its murder spree. I’d long known the blob-like race was intelligent, but it stunned me to realize they cared about something so mundane as vengeance against the right people.
“What’s going on outside?” Mercury said, having armed herself with extra bullets and weapons.
I searched for something sufficient to explain the chaos. In the end, I went with truth. “The village is under attack by pure-blooded Deep Ones. There’s too many of them to fight and they’re killing everyone. We have to get out of here.”
“I see,” Mercury said. “Should we try and help some flee?”
I thought about what to say. We didn’t have room. “We’ll offer to take the hotel manager’s kids to safety, him and his spouse, too. I don’t think we can fit anyone else. We won’t have time to unload either.” We also needed those supplies to survive. It was not a moral decision; it was one of cold, impersonal logic. I was getting sick of those.
“Sounds good,” Mercury said, opening the door. “Let’s try and kill some of the attackers on our way to the vehicles.”
“Agreed,” I said, not mentioning it was quite possible our transports were destroyed. In which case, we were fucked.
Cocking my shotgun, I took a deep breath and started moving with Mercury down the staircase to get the rest of our group, which had been staying on the second floor. Much to my surprise, I saw the entirety of them, sans Bobbie, were already gathered at the base of the hotel. Jessica was shooting a heavy-assault rifle around the side while Thom fired his revolvers, holstering them, and then pulling them back out to shoot again without any need to reload.
While Thom’s method of killing was flashier, Jessica seemed to be achieving a higher number of kills. August was magically pulling Deep Ones to his side and slitting their throats with a large kukri knife. The blood seemed to be gathering in front of our group and forming a protective shield, one that often lashed out with a crimson tentacle to eat passersby. There was a pile of weapons on the ground at their feet, showing they’d taken everything dangerous from our vehicles.
Holding out my shotgun, I saw a trio of Deep One assassins moving across the rooftops above our heads. I shot upwards, Mercury joining me, and the three fell over the sides before they could come down on top of our heads. More of the killers moved above, carrying nets and knives, only to be gunned down by the two of us.
“We need longer-ranged weapons,” I told Mercury.
“You think?” Mercury said, the two of us reaching the side of our group and exchanging our shotguns for rifles.
“What’s our situation, Corporal?” I asked Jessica.
“Screwed, Captain,” Jessica said. “The Salmon Heads have us hopelessly outnumbered, got a bunch of monsters, and have no real perception of their own mortality.”
“The latter is our advantage,” Thom said, shooting more Deep Ones and causing them to explode into flames.
“Where do you get that ammunition?” I asked, staring at him, before aiming at another Deep One and firing.
“It doesn’t use ammunition. It shoots microscopic particles from a dimension hotter than the sun,” Thom answered.
I paused, looking at him. “You realize that should cause the atmosphere to ignite, right?”
“It doesn’t, though, Mister Science.”
“Hey!” Mercury said, shooting yet another Deep One off the roof. “If anyone is Mister Science around here, it’s me.”
August’s attack seemed to ionize the air around us. “Not to interrupt you all acting like fucking children, but we need a plan.”
“We need to leave,” I said, noticing we were already running low on ammunition.
“That’s an objective, not a plan!” August shouted, falling on his knees from the exertions of his spellcasting. The bloody coagulation in front of us started to pulsate with hot, angry energy. “We need a coherent strategy, and I suggest we do it soon. The Beast Beyond is not exactly satisfied with the occasional fish; it wants the whole ocean of our dimension.”
“We get to the cars, now!” I shouted, shooting the head of a gold-jewelry-adorned Deep One shaman.
“What about Bobbie?” Mercury said, firing as more and more of the attacking Deep Ones started turning their attention to us.
“Jessica, get her on the walkie-talkie, we�
�re leaving now!” I shouted, making my decision. “Everyone else, cover our movement!”
Much of the town was on fire or leveled now, the giant monsters summoned by both sides having started to smash into each other while the assailants pulled back. They’d realized, perhaps, that the battle was not going to be the easy massacre they’d expected even if they’d already killed half of Insmaw’s population and only lost a fraction of their number.
Insmaw’s citizens littered the ground, many impaled or chopped to pieces, as their foes wasted valuable fighting time defacing corpses. I’d seen worse displays in my life, but few. Just as our group was about to head off, Thom broke ranks and ran around the side of the building in the opposite direction from our vehicles. I didn’t get a chance to shout, so perplexed was I by his actions, when he led Farmer Joe and his two daughters our way. He covered them the entire way with his pistols.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Mercury shouted, knocking away a Deep One who came around our shield with the butt of her rifle. She then shoved the barrel into its mouth and pulled the trigger, splattering the ground in front of us.
Thom shot a few more times before falling back to the center of our group. “I don’t like fish-fuckers, farmers, or self-righteous Great Old One worshipers. I hate people who hurt kids even more, though. These assholes aren’t sparing any.”
I gave Thom a nod of approval. He’d earned my respect in that moment, even if I wouldn’t spend time with him socially.
“Thank you,” Farmer Joe said, breathing fast as he held both his girls in his arms as if they were small packages.
“Is your wife nearby?” Jessica asked, holding the walkie-talkie she’d use to contact Bobbie.
Farmer Joe gave a pained shake of his head.
“Then let’s move!” I shouted, grabbing my shotgun off the ground again and abandoning the rest of our weapons. The Deep Ones were now coming upon us in great numbers and no matter how many we killed, there seemed to be more to replace them. It was a fanatical madness driving their attack, one determined to cleanse their race of the “human taint.”
Tower of Zhaal Page 18