I wasn't surprised, but I was frustrated. The physics of the room was entirely different from the physics that I called home. The compass was right, but the building had taken me down a different angle, and I had become subjected to the linear movements of the building's plan.
It took a little bit more of head-spinning before I decided that following the compass was the only reliable means of heading the direction that I wanted to go, even if it was going to randomly change course on me.
So, I randomly changed course with it.
The entire structure was ancient and the further that I traveled into the structure, the more ancient the city looked. Walls were worn, and unlike the wind-polished stone outside the structure and near the plane crash, the building was falling apart.
There hadn't been a chance in our mid-air tumble to check out the other buildings, but I was willing to bet they were all in the same amount of disrepair. Yet, for ruins they looked newer than anything I had ever seen in my career. The Egyptian or Aztec Pyramids were in worse condition than anything I was seeing in those halls. Somehow, these ancient buildings had done more than stand the test of time. They had survived possibly millions of years and only looked a few centuries old.
Turning right...or left...I came across a corpse. In William's manuscript, he described creatures that were six feet tall and star-shaped with wings that fanned out. At full extension he said that the wingspan was at least seven feet.
I couldn't verify if the wingspan was seven feet or not, but the corpse was definitely six feet in height. If I wasn't in a hurry, I would have inspected the corpse longer. My quick glance confirmed everything that William had said, but my concern far surpassed my excitement. It was either incredibly well preserved or had died recently.
I hoped for the former, but doubted it.
I kept running, following the compass and trying to not let the different physics destroy my concentration. I saw carvings on the walls and statues sitting in the middle of the pathway. All of the architecture and artwork was filled with the angular physics of the rest of the city, but it was also entirely organic-looking, as if it had been grown instead of carved.
Another turn in another impossible direction and I came upon a huge cavern. I flinched as the walls all lit up with some sort of inner luminescence. More drawings and carvings covered the walls and I began to recognize the scenes that Dyer had also described in his notes.
In his notes, and on those very walls, Nancy's father had described how the Elder Gods had been in a war for this very world.
They had spread into cities across our globe long before we were even on this planet. They developed primitive shoggoths, larger and without any specific shape, to be their slaves. These proto-shoggoths were also their warriors when the war finally came.
Cthulhu and his family came to the world after those cities had been established and chose to war for control. The war spanned the entire surface of the planet until the Elder Gods, losing ground, chose to withdraw to their last city with the last of the proto-shoggoths.
The war was over when the Mi-Go joined forces with Cthulhu and his brethren.
The Elder Gods retreated beneath the surface of their city and developed new shoggoths, the same shoggoths that would come to live in the shadows of our world today.
That city they went beneath was the city I was lost in right then.
Much of this I already knew from the Necronomicon as well as Dyer's notes. I probably could have translated the pictograms or whatever language the images were carved in if I were given enough time, but time was definitely something that I did not have.
I tore my eyes from the carvings and images and glanced at the compass. I used the reading to choose which of the many tunnels that shot off from the cavern I would take and resumed my run in that direction. I wasn't surprised when the lumination behind me blinked out as I left the large cavern.
Running down the corridor, the small amount of natural lighting that had been slipping between the cracks of this ancient city began to slim out. Suddenly, I was surrounded by too much dark to see the compass. I pulled a flare from my jacket and ignited.
Keeping the arm holding the flare ahead of me, I glanced again at the compass and kept going.
I continued in that manner for what I could only guess at being about five hundred yards before the flare burned out.
As the hissing of the lit flare died along with its light, a clicking noise, like a cane tapping ice, echoed throughout the halls. Using only the last remains of the flare's life, I quickly found a wall and used it to guide me in the direction of the clicking noise. As the noise grew louder, and the flare grew dimmer, the darkness took on another quality altogether. It felt oily and organic as it began to press at the edges of the light, seeking to fill every corner of this long abandoned structure.
When the flare died, I continued onward allowing the wall to guide me. I would have used another flare or even my lighter to check the compass, but I figured that direction didn't even really matter at that point. That click-click-click had an ominous feeling with it that seemed attached to the darkness, and I didn't want to go any further leaving something like that at my back.
The clicking grew in intensity as I continued to feel my way around in the dark. Finally, when the clicking was so loud that I thought I was doing permanent damage to my ears, I risked lighting another flare.
The sight that sprang into existence before me, made all the more horrific by the red glow of that hissing flare, were possibly hundreds of giant white penguins. Their beaks were filled with gnarled and jagged teeth and those snapping beaks were the source of the clicking sound. They stood six feet tall and were snapping at anything that moved near them, including each other.
With the sudden ignition of the flare, their attentions all snapped toward me. I shook myself from my moment of frozen terror and threw the flare over their heads as I drew my .38.
As I took aim at the nearest freak, I noticed something that made me hesitate. The penguins all turned and rushed after the flare. I kept my gun trained on them but didn't fire. Instead, I took the moment to observe from the now darker side of the penguins.
They huddled around where the flare had dropped and snapped at it and each other. The flare managed a moment of bouncing around them as they snapped at it, burnt themselves and then snapped at it again. As I continued to watch, more and more snapping came from the edge of the large group as well. As they fought to get closer to the flare, one penguin would click louder than the rest and those nearest him would snap their terrifying jaws in that penguin's direction.
They were attacking the sounds. That was how I was able to get as close to them without the flare without them rushing me. When I had lit the flare and broken my silence I had given away my position with a constant hissing noise. These large albino penguins were blind and reacted to sound.
That must have been what the clicking was. They were using it to find their way through the tunnels.
The scientist in me wanted desperately to learn more about these creatures, but since I had come to the terrible city, I had become quite adept at silencing my inner scientist no matter how much he screamed. Instead, another idea popped into my head.
I scooped up some loose rubble and pulled from the scooped up amount a sizeable pebble. With a baseball pitch that would have made my ten year old self jealous, I threw it at a far wall on the edge of the penguins.
The resounding crack was nothing compared to the hissing, but the penguins at the edge of the group turned immediately and waddled their way toward the new sound.
This was going to be very useful.
The flare still had a lot of life left to it, so I decided to see exactly how deep this herd of monster penguins went.
I moved as quietly as I could between them as they pushed and snapped at each other. I tried to stay low and as far from their beaks as I could, but they stretched the entirety of the hall and as I moved through them and past the flare, the darkness
made it easier and easier to crash directly into one of them.
I managed to get through with a minimal number of bites at me and my jacket was tattered around my shoulders. On the other side of them, I continued forward until the sound of their click-click-click began to subside. Once that I felt that I was far enough away, I pulled my lighter from my pocket and took a look at the compass. I was still moving in the right direction, but I had already traveled for so long that I was no longer sure if distance even mattered.
I should have seen some sign of the Strobel and his men. Uncertainty and worry were beginning to set in.
I hadn't traveled over any of those walkways that Sebastian and I had seen on the way into the city. Yet, I had traveled farther than should have been possible within this one building. I was either moving between the buildings by another method, or this one building was incredibly larger than it should have been. I hoped that I was traveling between the buildings somehow, because the other option meant that I was never going to find my way out or to the Germans.
Finding my strength, I pushed onward. I made sure not to get too far ahead without making some noise to bring my new friends along with me. Their constant clicking remained a steady hum in the back of my mind as I continued forward. We continued that way for another hour before I finally found the damned Nazis.
I heard them before I saw them. The steady clicking was joined by the more recognizable hum and whine of machinery. I put away my compass and lighter and followed that noise until I found its source.
Another large cavern, much like the first one that I had come across, was filled with generators, machinery, lighting, and German soldiers. There was also a lot of weaponry.
This cavern was twice the size of the first one that I had found and had pillars reaching toward the decorated ceiling. It still had that organic look and for some reason the walls didn't light up as the previous cavern's had. Only half of the pillars were still standing the rest were scattered around the room in large piles of rubble. Strobel's men weren't worried about anyone coming after them, because they hadn't placed much in the way of guards at the tunnel entrance that I had come from.
One man stood guard, but he was facing the cavern itself and drinking with another soldier. Sneaking past them was simple.
From there, I maneuvered between the piles of rubble and machinery around the edge of the cavern. I wasn't only avoiding the large army, I was also conducting reconnaissance.
I saw a lot of Nazi soldiers that were nothing like the first two I had come across. Fear was permeating their mindsets. Several of the soldiers were laid out on stretchers with what looked like burns and bite marks. They had come across something in their migrating through the caverns.
Finally, I found my companions. They were near the opposite end of the cavern from where I had entered. Together they were sitting on the floor of the cavern against a fallen pillar. Leo's face was swollen and I took that to mean that, in pure Leo fashion, he couldn't keep his mouth shut.
Nancy was laying with her head on her father's lap. Her eyes were wide open and staring off at nothing. William had his journal and my hopes lifted.
William was panning through it, but unlike on the boat, his brow wasn't furrowed with confusion. Instead, he was skimming pages and then moving on to the next.
He was reading it.
Standing over them, fear creasing their foreheads, were two guards. They were both standing closer to Leo and had their guns drawn.
Leo, Nancy, and her father all had their hands tied with a rope connecting each of them at the wrists. The end of the rope was being held by one of the guards.
Considering my recon completed, I made the painstakingly slow return back to where I had entered the cavern. On my way there, I came across a smaller hole in the wall of the cavern that held a tunnel only slightly larger than myself. I filed that useful information away for later and kept moving until I was almost all the way back to my new albino allies.
Once I had reached them, I pulled out the last flare and lit it.
Chapter 10: The Tunnels
The only warning that any of Strobel’s men received came in the form of a bouncing flare that was shooting sparks as it slid past their feet.
Their first thoughts came in the form of multiple shouts of “Bombe! Bombe!”
I was watching from the shadows of the hall as one of the Nazis began laughing and picked it up, waving it around. As he continued laughing, one of his fellow soldiers turned to look down the tunnel, peering into the darkness.
He looked right at me and didn’t even see me.
How could he see me, when hundreds of six foot tall, carnivorous, albino penguins waddled with an amazing speed into the cavern after their favorite toy flare.
Clicking filled the entire cavern with so much noise that the screams of the soldiers became drowned out by it. I covered my ears and ran between my new allies and back along the path that led to my companions.
Gunfire mixed with the clicks and I took a moment to look at how the battle was going.
It was bloody. The soldiers had never encountered anything like these blindly biting and snapping penguins. Gunfire rang out, but panic made many of the shots either go wide or only hit the penguins in the torso. Torso shots would kill the beasts, but anyone who’s ever hunted knew that it would only piss them off first. Enraged, the penguins bit at anything that made a sound. Mostly that included soldiers, but some infighting among the penguins was also happening.
The Penguin Menace was making quick work of the first round of soldiers. Beaks tore away limbs and buried themselves into chests. One large beak wrapped directly around the neck of one soldier who was trying to shoot a penguin off of his arm. In one powerful squeeze, his head came off. His death didn’t stop their lunges, though and the two penguins worked in concert to tear him to shreds.
The first wave of Strobel’s men was taken by surprise, but the second had time to get over their shock and open fire. Unfortunately, their own men acted as shields and protected many of the penguins, but many penguins also died.
I had no doubts that the Germans would come out as the victors, but I wasn’t sure about how long it would take or how many of them would die in the process. I tore my eyes away and returned to hunting for my friends.
As I moved, bullets flew over my cover and into the wall behind me. I spared a quick glance and realized I had nothing to fear. The penguins were advancing nearly as much as I was, and none of the guns had been aimed at me.
In German, I heard someone shout, “All at once now!” I recognized Strobel’s voice immediately and moved faster. If he was organizing his soldiers than the battle would be over soon.
My companions were right where I left them. They were still seated, but that was the doing of the guards. It was obvious that they were anxious to see what was going on.
William was still frantically reading the journal while his daughter and Leo strained their necks to watch the fight. Their guards were also watching the battle, but kept glancing down at Leo.
My friend must have given them quite the hard time.
I stood and drew my pistol. Firing two rapid shots, I dropped both of the guards before they could turn in my direction. Then I drew my sword and moved to cut the ropes.
Faster than I would have anticipated, Leo lunged at my waist. His tackle knocked the wind out of me and knocked me to the ground. Rope still around his hands, Leo straddled me and began beating on my already damaged head.
His blows rained down on me and he shouted words that I assumed were in French, but I was too busy getting beat to catch.
Between the abrupt tackle and my wounded shoulder I was incapable of fighting him off, and assumed I would be dead before I could finish rescuing my friend.
Then, as quickly as it had happened, it was over.
Leo was pulled off of me by William and his daughter and dragged a few feet away. Holding their own ropes tight, they held him in place.
“What the hell
was that about?” I demanded when I had caught my breath.
“Monster!” Leo howled in English. He struggled against his captors again, but they held him tight.
Over the strain of holding Leo still, Nancy said, “We saw you die.” She grunted. “This place is filled with monsters. Are you one?”
I shook my head and pulled open my jacket over my shoulder. I grunted in pain as I did it. The bandage had more than soaked through and the jacket was sticking to the bloody mess. “Strobel shot me in shoulder.” I pulled the coat back on and scooped up my sword and pistol from the cavern floor. “Sebastian saved me after he heard the gunshot.”
Leo calmed almost instantly. “The Arkatonic?”
I shook my head.
Nancy added, “Sebastian?”
I shook my head again and added, “Most of his men survived.”
It wasn’t the time to tell them about Olivia’s part in killing Sebastian. The clicking had gone become less pronounced and the gunfire had slowed. We needed to get moving.
I cut the ropes and helped William gather his notes and the journal.
Leo slapped me on my good arm and was smiling.
“I knew that death would not hold you for long.”
I indicated my shoulder and replied, “Not for lack of trying.”
My friend laughed and then went to the dead guards to gather their weapons. Leo checks his machine gun and then hands the other to Nancy. He tried to show her how to use it, but she shrugged him off and checked the chamber without help.
We took off back the way that I had come with myself in the lead. As we moved, I risked a peek at the battle and noted that most of my penguin army was dead. They had taken a lot of the Nazi soldiers with them, but not nearly enough. Their purpose had been to cause a distraction, but I was a little disappointed that they hadn’t eliminated the entire German forces.
We came to the person-sized tunnel that I had noticed earlier and I directed everyone inside, with me taking up the rear in case anyone saw us go in.
The Adventures of Andrew Doran: Box Set Page 39