by David Kernot
Let them take him. He opened his arm wide, inviting them.
Denna ran past him firing, and the sky lit up.
Emerson glanced over to Denna and smiled at her. Their eyes locked on to each other, and she grinned back.
The world lit up in a blaze of burning brighter than light itself. It was so bright that Emerson had to cover his eyes.
Denna ran forward with two Steyr's on auto fire, one on each hip. She faced one creature full on and ignored the others as they shifted in and out. Denna fired at it. It danced around like a puppet on a string, and then it seemed to sag. It fell to the ground, and the other creatures around it faded.
When the light dimmed, the serpent was on the ground on fire, burning and shrieking.
Denna stood there in the middle of the flames like a goddess possessed. She looked amazing. Beautiful.
And then Emerson's arm ached. He fell to his knees from the pain, and he grabbed his arm with his right hand. The pain became unbearable, and he tried to pull the prosthetic device away from him.
The alien device he had seen back in London appeared in front of him. Floating above him. A long elongated silver device. It spun clockwise, slowly at first and then faster.
Andrew Stone ran over, screaming. "Nooooooooooooooooo!" He jumped over Denna to reach the device, arms outstretched, and light exploded everywhere.
Denna vanished. The device vanished. And then there was nothing but silence and scorching desert winds.
Denna had gone. Emerson couldn't breathe. Wonderfully, funny, amazing Denna. Now there was only silence. And a numbness that he couldn't quantify.
◆◆◆
General Cobb smiled at Colonel Andrew Stone. What now he asked?
Andrew Stone rubbed his head. "I'm going home, General. I have no words. Giselle is waiting for me. She would know more about what happened than anyone. If I find out anything, I shall be quick to pass it on." The Colonel stepped forward and extended his hand. Cobb shook it.
"Very well, then. Until we need you."
Stone frowned as if to suggest there would be no next time. "I need to call Giselle. I think we need to return to Avebury and see if we can sort this out."
"Very well," said General Cobb.
He faced Emerson.
"General?"
Emerson was numb. All he could do right now was to head down to Stirling North and see grams. Maybe Amye. Nothing made any sense right now. Denna had somehow become trapped inside an alien device was at this stage unknown.
How did any of this make any sense? He took a deep breath.
"Emerson, we need you to go to the Horn. There's a detachment heading out that way."
"Sir? I thought I'd have time to head south?"
"I'm sorry, son. Denna might not have said, but we've been able to translate some symbols on your screen, and it's a complete copy of the G’harne Fragments. They need you there out on the Horn, son. It's important."
"But sir, don't care. I don't want this arm. Take it away." His throat tightened, and the General stepped closer, put his hand on Emerson's shoulder. "I'm sorry, Emerson. We are all at a loss right now."
Emerson looked directly at the General, and he could see the sincerity in the man's words. He, too, missed Denna.
Emerson nodded. "The Horn then, sir."
"Good man."
"Denna would approve. Keep your eyes peeled… you know, in case you see something important."
"Avebury might hold some clues, sir. Failing that, I will return to the Temple of Sin if I have to."
"Good." General Cobb rubbed his eyes. "You are both exemplary soldiers."
◆◆◆
Act 3 –Gods of the Multiverse
“Man rules now where They ruled once;
They shall soon rule where man rules now.
After summer is winter, and after winter summer.
They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again…”
H.P. LOVECRAFT, The Dunwich Horror, 1928
Chapter I
Adelaide, South Australia
Sergeant Emerson James Ash stumbled from the Australian C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft and stared across the deserted tarmac, barely lit by the perimeter lights. The whine of the plane's engines abated, and the backwash buffeted him. He joined the formation of soldiers, and his shoulders drooped from memories of the stench and heat during the fight at the Horn of Africa. He wasn't sure how he felt about being back in Australia. Part of him wished he were still fighting an undeclared war, one where chaos created its own order. General Cobb had not approached him for some time. This could only mean that all was right with that part of the world.
Emerson glanced across the tarmac toward the airport arrival gates, and disappointment twisted in his gut. The only life he noticed were the clouds of bugs that swarmed the military airport's scattered mercury-vapor lights. He hadn't expected a hero's welcome, but a night return, sneaking back into your own country while everyone slept, wasn't what he had in mind. His body ached from Avian flu, H5N1, and he coughed so hard he thought he'd broken several ribs.
He braced his chest with one arm, swung both of his dive bags over a shoulder and winced. All his joints ached. It brought on another coughing fit. He struggled against the pain and fought for breath. Emerson stumbled and fell from the single file of returning service personnel.
Someone in a ground staff HAZCHEM suit grabbed his cyber arm. It throbbed at the elbow where the amputee joined and Emerson pulled away as the implanted screen lit and basked the groundie and he in the dull orange light. "C'mon soldier," the man said. "Back in line." The words were barely audible under the groundie's breather mask, but Emerson nodded.
The military Infosphere feed scrolled with environmental data, terrain, time, and info from his last search: critical information on the terrorist Shudde-M'ell. He shut the display off before anyone could see the classified data. Emerson gritted his teeth and swung both dive bags over his shoulder again. He cringed and stepped back in line with the rest of the camouflaged soldiers. Every second or third soldier coughed and stumbled too. He wasn't alone.
Emerson walked until the soldier in front of him stopped, and they all regrouped at immigration. They'd said we had brought the H5N1 pandemic through migratory birds, and it affected the area stretching from eastern Asia all the way to Siberia and to the Arabian Peninsula. Perhaps it'd even reached the Black Sea Basin. But Emerson knew different. It hadn't been migratory birds. Just when they were gaining the advantage in the war the enemy launched the virus. His team came down with it in a few days, and even though they were jacked up on the guava extract, G. It had done no one any good. It hit them hard. He couldn't be sure, but H5N1 changed everything, and—
"Sergeant."
He blinked away the memories and handed over his military passport.
"Sergeant Emerson James Ash?" the man asked.
Emerson stared at the immigration officer through bleary eyes. "Yes."
"Anything to declare?"
Part of him wished he were back at the Horn. He stared at his prosthetic arm and shook his head. "Nothing."
"On your way, then."
But he lied. Who didn't? He'd never un-jacked his tech since the day he got sick with H5N1. What was he going to do? Admit to it and lose his prosthetic arm? Have them tear it off at the elbow because they classified it? Not likely. It's not like it held anything important: just the whole fricken Mogadishu ORBAT, critical IO points, and their C2 network. He'd hidden the unabridged translation of the G'harne Fragments, Chthonian tactics, and a bio on Shudde-M'ell and all his contacts, deep inside an encrypted data layer in his prosthetic arm's tech. Sure he would step forward with that intel.
After customs, they stood in line, arms wide open and faces upright. They sprayed everyone with an insecticide in case they'd brought anything other than H5N1 back, and they handed out worming poison to digest.
"Anyone got anything classified on them?" barked a warrant officer from the front of the
group. "Anyone got live ammo? If so, step forward now and you'll be handled appropriately. Last chance, though."
Emerson stared blankly at a soldier who strode forward with a full magazine of ammunition. They grabbed him and two men frog-marched him outside. He chuckled inside with contempt. Handled appropriately. Sure.
The rest of them shook their heads and said the declaration in unison.
A man in a HAZCHEM suit stepped forward and handed Emerson a facemask. "Wear this until you feel better. And here…" He handed over an envelope and two bottles of meds.
"What are these?" Emerson asked.
"Voucher for a bus ticket home, and some doxy and flu tablets. Stay on the meds for two weeks and keep out of the sun."
Stay out of the sun? In Australia? Emerson could have laughed if he'd had the energy. "Bus ticket?" He raised his eyebrows in surprise.
"Don't worry, we'll drop you off at the terminal. You won't have to walk there."
"Of course not." The sarcastic comment didn't come out the way he'd hoped, and he tried to smile but didn't have the energy. Home was a five and a half hour drive north. Even with a bus fare, he'd still have a fifty-minute walk home.
◆◆◆
Psychedelic multi-coloured monsters chased Emerson. They reached out with their hypnotic stares and power until he felt their commanding urge for him to obey. He pushed the image away and ran, firing his weapon, but the images returned. No matter how long he evaded capture, they always found him, and the dream started over again.
"Sir. We're here… It's time to get off." The bus driver shook him awake at the Port. Port Augusta was where he had to get off.
Emerson pushed the nightmare images of the Horn away. He blamed the anti-malarial meds, or it may have been the months of communal living, and the hard bunks in small, overcrowded rooms with no escape from the enemy mortars. He clambered off the bus in a black fog.
The driver waited long enough for him and two other passengers to disembark. Before Emerson could shoulder his bags, the driver pulled the door shut and headed down the road in a cloud of red dust. The Port had a prairie reputation, and you didn't want to be out at night when the gangs of people roamed. High on med-induced nightmares, Emerson couldn't blame him.
He swung his bags over his shoulders and winced. No better than when he had arrived back in Australia. He stared down the desolate road until the morning heat shimmer distorted his view. He wasn't sure how he would get home, but pride stopped him from calling Aunt Rose and asking her to drive out and pick him up. It was early enough. He would walk.
But ten minutes in, the dust was almost as bad as it had been in the red zone overseas. He stopped outside a roadhouse and wiped the sweat of sickness from his face. He felt greasy and light-headed all at once. There was no way he could walk home. He called Myles to come and pick him up.
He sat down in a finger of shade by the roadhouse and waited. His head spun, and his breathing rattled through the mask they'd provided. He wasn't sure what he'd tell Myles about the last eight months.
The smell of fuel and the shadows drifting across the wall triggered recent memories. Emerson's nostrils flared with disgust as he remembered showering in the cubicle. Brown slime oozed from the shower drain and covered his feet. Other people's excrement. He covered his mouth so as not to vomit. The webs between his toes were already bleeding from disease. He didn't need this and vowed that the next shower he took would be from one of the other latrine and shower blocks further up the hill. Someone else could shower in his shit.
A siren went off to warn of incoming IDF. He threw himself into the dirt, close to the blast wall for protection. Out in the open, the risk of death multiplied. The sound of his racing heart pounded loud in his ears. The missile exploded a scant distance away. Shrapnel smacked into the blast shelter above him and the ground shook. Another missile would follow. It always did. He stood and sprinted into the bomb shelter on the other side of the thick concrete wall. A second blast followed, and he dived to the ground. The hand of god had saved him again. How many times had it been now? Eight? Too many. He closed his eyes and flicked the brown sludge from his feet. He told himself he was a cyber-warrior, proud of his recent attachment to the 53rd. Being part of the team that led the non-kinetic summer campaign had been cathartic after he left Amye. Going forward a short time after the SF landed in Mogadishu right when the Horn exploded as a hotspot of world terror had meant he had served in one of the fiercest areas in recent battle history. Some boneheads joked he wasn't a proper soldier, that he and the other geeks had never graduated from infantry school. Emerson got that: his work differed from their kinetic fight. The Infosphere was his world, and he embraced the Electronic Warfare Battle with as much vigour as they did their machine guns and armour-piercing rounds.
The toot of a car horn pulled him from the memory. Emerson waved to Myles in his classic fiery red Pontiac Trans Am. As bad as he felt, he couldn't help but grin at Myles' choice of blended bio fuel. It smelled like vomit.
Emerson climbed into the front, but Myles didn't speak, which wasn't unusual. He spun the tires and sent red dust sprawling behind us. Emerson was just glad he never asked him about Amye.
Myles frowned. "What's the mask for?"
"I've got the flu," said Emerson.
Myles nodded. "Must have it bad then. How did you get here?"
"Bus."
"You caught the bus with a bad flu? Wow. When did you get in?"
"Flight arrived just after 2 am. They shoved us on a bus and here I am."
"That's no welcome. Why did they do that? You should have had families there, people to cheer after the exceptional work you guys did."
Emerson shrugged. "We're soldiers. We don't need accolades. I'm just happy to be home."
"Are you?" asked Myles. "Happy to be here I mean?"
Emerson's stomach twisted with uncertainty. He shrugged. "I'm not sure."
Myles headed out on the main road from town. "You look like shit, Emerson," he said eventually.
Emerson laughed. Myles was right, at least.
"I see you got a new arm. I wondered how you'd be able to serve after what happened."
Emerson raised his prosthetic in the air. "Army issue," he said. "Although, I don't know what I will do with it now. It's not like I have a reason to access classified information or run battle ops anymore."
"What was it like out there?"
He shrugged. He didn't want to talk about it. Not here. Not now. They thought he was out in Afghanistan, not fighting on the Horn. What could he say?
He didn't remember much after the virus hit, but what he did made him shiver. He had stumbled onto an unusual network out on the Horn. He'd found a chat room with a reference to the Cult of Nophru-Ka. The cult had fled the jungles of Western Africa, and they took with them some G'harne Fragments and translations made by important scholars over the years. They'd settled in the Land of Punt on the northern area of the Horn, undisturbed, until we'd arrived, guns blazing. That's why the Nophru-Ka released the Chthonian from below the surface. Short-tentacled, eyeless squid, led by the terrorist Shudde-M'ell, a gigantic member of their species. The creatures had used their telepathic powers to chain humans in one place so they were easy picking by the insurgents. They had an uncanny ability to mess with our minds if we got too close, to confuse a person so they'd stumble into an ambush and be killed.
Nobody would believe him if he said anything.
The journey to Stirling North sped by in silence. Myles was good to him. He always gave him the space he needed, and Emerson liked him for that. Stirling North was a small town on the edge of the Great Australian Sandy Desert, about as far removed from anywhere as you could get. It was just what he needed right now: solitude.
They drove into town, and Emerson expected to see the same dogs curled up in the shade along the dusty streets as if nothing had changed in the nine months he'd been away, but the small town had exploded with people.
"Where have they come from?" he aske
d.
"They're war refugees from Mogadishu. We're taking them in, helping them to reintegrate into society. Apparently they've been fighting a civil war."
Mogadishans? From the Horn? Emerson dared not speak. The war had followed him.
Myles pulled up in front of Emerson's old Gram's house, a ten-minute walk from Aunt Rose's Farm. "See you at the pub tomorrow night?"
Emerson nodded. "If I'm feeling better... but thanks for the lift."
◆◆◆
The afternoon sun lit the long veranda on the front of old Grams' cottage and helped keep the sun off the thick stone walls. Emerson dropped his bags at the door and removed his mask. Sick or not, old Grams wouldn't stand for him wearing it. He stood and admired her collection of wilted snapdragons and delphiniums and collected his thoughts. Grams would see straight through him. She'd be able to tell he was uncertain and that he'd reached a crossroad in his life.
The screen door springs creaked. "Well, are you going to come in and wish your old Grams a welcome, or are you going to stand out in the sun all afternoon, young Emerson?"
He turned and faced her. It didn't matter how old he was, he'd always be young to her. He smiled. She seemed no different from when he had left almost a year ago.
"Have you seen her yet?"
He closed his eyes and shook his head.
"Well, you should. Sort things out, boy."
He nodded and walked over and hugged the old woman, careful not to crush her with his artificial limb.
He followed the bent-over woman inside into the cool and dimly lit kitchen. He sat down at the ancient wooden table. It was as if a load had fallen from him.
"Tea?"
He nodded, and Grams poured him a cup, sat down and sipped her tea from a chipped saucer. She threw him a toothless smile.
"Did you find what you were looking for, running away and joining the army?" She stared at his prosthetic arm. "Tell me what's going on Emerson."