A World Darkly (Wrath of the Old Gods Book 3)

by John Triptych

  Tyrone was intrigued. “He’s got a prisoner on board his ship? What for?”

  “It ain’t no normal prisoner,” Shani whispered. “We heard that he has some sort of magical creature that’s gonna guide him through the rivers and swamps to find the most fabled creature out there.”

  Tyrone bit his lip. Was he getting into something over his head? “What fabled creature is out there? What kind of monster does he have locked away?”

  “We don’t know what kind of creature the captain has,” Monique said. “He doesn’t show it to anybody. We know about the great serpent of the swamps. Everyone around here knows that. It’s the biggest horned serpent anyone’s ever seen.”

  “I saw a big snake in my dreams,” Tyrone said. “It looked like a giant-sized snake and its scales were glowing like bright light. It had horns growing out of its head, like deer antlers.”

  “That’s it!” Shani exclaimed. “That’s the great horned serpent everyone talks about! The one we told you about while you was on our boat. Everybody but my momma trying to catch it, the little ones anyway.”

  “Momma told us never to try and catch it,” Moesha said. “It’s a very powerful animal. Many people took their boats into the waterways around here and many of them didn’t come back. Momma says that if you try to hunt the magic creatures of the bayou, it will be they who will be hunting you instead.”

  “Momma said anyone who goes on that ship will die,” Shani added.

  Tyrone stared out into the water for a minute. He was speechless. There was a rising fear growing at the back of his spine.

  Monique walked back out along the pier. She was carrying a small bag made out of red cloth on her right hand. “Why is everyone so quiet all of a sudden?”

  Shani giggled again. “We just scaring Mr. Gatlin.”

  Monique sat down and wagged a finger at her. “Don’t scare our guest like that, Shani. Shame on you.”

  Tyrone shook his head and made a little smile. “That’s okay, they told me a lot of useful things.”

  Monique placed the red little pouch on the table beside him. “Here, take that with you.”

  Tyrone picked it up. The red bag had a string tied around it. “What is it?”

  “It’s a gris-gris. A voodoo amulet bag,” Monique said. “It will help protect you from the vengeful spirits of the bayou. Wear it over your neck at all times. I made that one especially for you.”

  “Thanks,” Tyrone said as he placed it around his neck. “I hope my god will accept this.”

  Monique nodded. “He will. He and my loa Papa Legba are working together. You see, there is a growing darkness that must be stopped. And you will be playing a very big role in all of it. Remember my words to you, Tyrone Gatlin.”

  That night, Tyrone slept in the storage shack behind Monique’s house. He dreamed of endless swamps and of mists rising from the waters. At one point, he could see himself standing on the bow of the riverboat as it cruised along the bayous of the rain drenched deltas of the south. There were other men with him, but they had a different sort of nature. While he was just a traveler, he could sense that these men were there for their own selfish reasons. That was when they all saw something darkening the grey sky above them. When they all looked up they realized it was a massive flock of owls, there were so many of the birds that the animals were now somehow all around them and he couldn’t see anything else. Then the men beside him started screaming.

  He woke up with a start. When he opened his eyes, it was already morning.

  5. Minutes of the Meeting

  Pennsylvania

  By the time the small convoy had been cleared to pass through the sixth military checkpoint, it was already late afternoon and the skies had darkened. They were quite close to the state border with Maryland as the fleet of four Humvees turned into a seldom used asphalt road. In more peaceful times, the surrounding forest of great oak and hickory would have been an ideal place for a tranquil hike, but now the landscape had been marred by new construction works and heavy tracked vehicles.

  Mary Arctor fidgeted slightly as she remained seated on the back seat of the third Humvee. Unlike previous people who held the title of Secretary of Defense, Mary was a civilian and had never served in the military. She had spent most of her career in the Defense Intelligence Agency. Mary had been one of their best analysts for over twenty years when it came to assessing potential worldwide threats from both rogue nations and terrorist groups. It was by pure luck she ended up as the United States Deputy Secretary of Defense, the previous two men who held the title of deputy had to bow out for two very different reasons. The first deputy had suffered a stroke while on the job and had to resign due to health concerns. The second deputy was involved in a scandal involving a prominent senator’s wife and was disgraced. In order to placate a potential congressional investigation, the previous secretary of defense picked Mary out from a hat. She had a clean record and her accomplishments were spotless. The fact that she was a woman also helped out in the political arena. Her superiors in the White House figured that she would be allowed to serve as deputy secretary for a few years once the political firestorm had died down, then it was felt that she would quietly resign and someone more politically minded would ultimately take her place.

  Then the Glooming happened. The world crisis deepened and the entire country had suddenly faced catastrophic losses in both the civilian and military spheres. The Secretary of Defense was killed, along with most of his staff, when the separatists from the newly self-styled nation of Christian Kansas detonated a nuclear device in Cheyenne Mountain. The president, who was attending a high level meeting at a nearby Air Force base, was abducted in a daring attack on his Marine One helicopters. Suddenly, Mary’s once tranquil career had changed considerably. With the country’s top leadership in chaos, she became the Secretary of Defense. The continuity of government was set in motion, and she was now the fifth most powerful person in the country. Although the president had been rescued, he was still incapable of assuming his duties. This made Mary’s position even more critical than ever before.

  Her assistant Sheila Giraud sat beside her. The NSA analyst spent most of the trip looking out of the window. “There must be a whole brigade of troops in this whole area,” she said softly.

  Mary nodded as the convoy stopped in front of the tunnel entrance. “I don’t know what good it will do against the Aztecs, but it’s better than nothing.”

  Sheila adjusted her thick framed glasses as she stared at the tunnel entrance. The mouth of the subterranean access way looked like it had been bored through a massive concrete ramp along the side of a hill. There were numerous defensive emplacements and bunkers that had been newly constructed all around them. M-1 Abrams battle tanks were stationed at the parking lot, ready to engage anything at a moment’s notice. Numerous military soldiers with sniffer dogs and radiation detectors were in a constant state of alert as they made every effort to search them. “I wish I could take pictures, my dad would have loved this,” she said.

  Mary looked at her direction and smirked. “First time here?”

  “Oh yes,” Sheila giggled a bit at first, then she became serious. “Pity it had to be at a time like this.”

  Raven Rock Mountain Complex was a military installation built into the side of Blue Ridge Summit. Much like Cheyenne Mountain, Raven Rock had an underground nuclear bunker, designed to safeguard important persons in the government and would function as a command and control installation in the event of a major crisis. Now that the old gods had returned, the capabilities of this base would be put to the test.

  The small convoy was led into the tunnel by military police. Mary could see that the underground passage was large enough to bring in heavy trucks. The tunnel walls were rough hewn and drilled directly through the monolithic rock, which meant that the designers had poked holes into a giant, underground boulder that now served as a critical juncture for the US government. The massive, thickened blast doors that they passed throug
h were beveled to fit neatly at the tunnel entrance. Should the worst ever happen, the great steel doors would shut them all inside.

  Sheila had to hold on to the side door as the convoy made several sharp turns while they travelled along the lit tunnel. Mary knew that the designers made deliberate choices to twist the passageway in order to angle away any potential shockwaves from nuclear attacks that could directly go through. As she remembered the details from the NORTHCOM briefing she had attended hours before, Mary knew that nuclear attacks would be the least of their worries right now.

  After a few minutes, the convoy stopped in front of a smaller blast door that had a team of Secret Service agents guarding it. Mary and Sheila got out of the vehicle as the agents examined their IDs once more. Within seconds, they were guided through the second set of blast doors and into an airlock. As they waited for the atmosphere to cycle to its proper pressure, Mary straightened the collar of her office coat. The airlock opened after a few seconds and they were let into the heart of Raven Rock Complex.

  Sheila could see a number of buildings situated in the underground caverns. Other tunnels led to the reservoir and the power plants at each ends. There were cots with sleeping men situated at the sides of the rock walls. A number of soldiers were sitting on folding chairs beside makeshift tables of plastic crates, either playing cards or typing on laptops. It was a crowded place, but everyone felt safe inside.

  One of the Secret Service agents led them past the command building and into a small meeting room situated at an adjacent bunker. Once they were ushered inside, the agent closed the door behind them. Sitting beside a narrow table were two men who were now the de-facto leaders of a battered country. Mary nodded to the two as Sheila stood slightly behind her.

  Congressman Elias Baldwin was the Speaker of the House, and he was the older of the two. His silver hair was combed neatly to the side and he wore a dark blue suit. He pointed a finger at Sheila. “What’s she doing here, Mary? This was supposed to be a private meeting.”

  Mary drew a deep breath before answering him. “Sheila Giraud is now the acting head of Task Force Omega since Dr. Paul Dane’s disappearance. Since you both wanted an up to date assessment of the situation, I figured it’s best to hear from the leader of my team directly. She has the proper clearances and she has a better grasp of the situation- that means she can provide direct answers to your questions. Is that okay with you?”

  Senator Anthony Staley shrugged. He was the current president, previously holding the position of Pro Tempore of the Senate. Tall, rangy, with curly brown hair, Staley was supposed to be the next big thing in politics. He had plans to run for President of the United States at one time, but all this was before the Glooming. “I don’t have a problem with her,” he said. “Welcome, Mrs. Giraud.”

  “Thanks. And it’s Ms. Giraud,” Mary said as she sat down along with Sheila at the far end of the table.

  Staley smiled. “My apologies. Now that we’re all here, I think it’s better we go by first names so that we can get to the heart of the matter.”

  “Fine by me,” Mary said. Sheila smiled at them as she placed a stack of folders that she had been carrying on the table in front of her.

  Baldwin seemed irritated as he drummed his fingers on the desk. With the president out of commission and the fact that a vice president had yet to be chosen, he was now running the country and was vice president in all but name. “Okay then, let’s get to it. I called for this meeting because I need some answers to the crisis that’s ongoing. My last meeting with the NORTHCOM commanders this morning wasn’t very encouraging. Half of them want an all-out counterattack against the Aztecs while the rest want to nuke the separatists in Kansas. I need more options, and in order for me to have more options then I need more intel on what exactly is going on. Anthony has got his own questions too.”

  Staley looked at Mary Arctor. “Is it true that our nukes were useless against the Aztecs?”

  Mary nodded. Paul Dane’s predictions were right. If only they had listened to him. “It would appear so. Our nuclear failsafe option against the initial enemy advances have completely failed.”

  “How exactly did it happen?” Baldwin said. “Did the delivery systems fail to get the bombs to the enemy or did the devices fail to explode?”

  “The latter. We used artillery with nuclear devices and we had planted nuclear bombs within likely areas where the enemy would be advancing through. For some unknown reason, each and every nuclear device failed to detonate,” Mary said. “What we learned from the Israelis was that they attempted to nuke enemy forces in Jordan too. It didn’t work there either.”

  Staley crossed his arms and leaned back on his chair. “So what happened then?”

  “Exact same result as ours,” Mary said. “Failure to detonate. For some reason, each and every device that has been deployed against these creatures has failed to achieve a nuclear chain reaction. To put it bluntly: nukes are useless against them.”

  Baldwin sighed. “Jesus. But we can’t exactly fight them with conventional troops either. Every time we go up against them, we lose. These Aztecs seem to take plenty of casualties, but their numbers just don’t seem to decline.”

  Sheila leaned over the table so that they would notice her. “The Israelis were able to win the first battle of Qasr Al-Hallabat by the use of golems.”

  All three of them turned to look at her. Mary said nothing. They couldn’t fight these gods with what they had. She hoped that the two men sitting across from her would finally get that.

  “Please explain,” Baldwin said. “I thought we were out of communications with our overseas allies unless they send a ship with tons of letters on it.”

  “Before she begins,” Mary said. “Let me just add that we’re starting to put up a communications link with a number of foreign countries, but it’s a slow process.”

  “How?” Staley asked.

  “We’re currently trying to set up a relay network of FM radio stations to pass information from one area to another. It’s crude and there’s plenty of interference from unknown sources, but it’s the best we can do,” Mary said. “We are also seeing if we could implement a semaphore line, which is an optical relay system but due to the undependable weather, we doubt it would work. The military is busy training a Morse code unit, but the only reliable means of getting word to the troops right now is using personal dispatchers.”

  “Let’s keep at it, whatever works,” Baldwin said before staring at Sheila. “Go ahead, Sheila.”

  Sheila cleared her throat before she started to talk. “As you well know, Israel has fallen to the Babylonians. There were hundreds of thousands of refugees that attempted to escape across the Mediterranean Sea to try and get to Cyprus, or Crete. Others attempted to go north, through Lebanon and to try and make it to Turkey. We know of a few thousand that made it through southern Jordan and into Saudi Arabia. The fate of most of these people is unknown. We don’t know too much about what happened to the Israeli government, but we believe they attempted the initiation of something dubbed the ‘Samson Option’, which was the deliberate use of their entire nuclear arsenal against the advancing Babylonians the moment they smashed through.”

  Staley leaned forward. He was all ears now. “And?”

  “No nuclear detonations in that region were detected, nor did we hear of one from all our intel sources,” Mary said.

  “So all nukes are useless against these gods then,” Baldwin said ruefully. “Okay, please continue.”

  “Someone got through to one of our networks,” Mary said. “He authenticated as one of our former CIA case officers in Iraq. It was a short message before he went off the air. Most of our intel in that region came from him.” Mary looked at her assistant. “Sheila knows more about this. Sheila?”

  “From what he told us, it seems that a rabbi in Israel was able to procure some sort of magical book and he used it to create mythical constructs of some sort. Our source called it a golem. He claimed that the Israeli
s were able to create up to a battalion of these creatures and used it successfully to stave off a Babylonian attack in Jordan. Though it was only a temporary measure, because these golems apparently suffered major losses. The source also told us that the Israelis sacrificed a large number of Palestinian prisoners in order to create those so-called constructs,” Sheila said.

  Baldwin shook his head in disbelief. “Sacrifice? How?”

  “Human sacrifice,” Mary said. “Our source claimed that in order to animate the constructs, the Israelis had to feed it with human souls apparently. It gave them some measure of defense but there must have been some sort of revolt, because the last intel reports claimed some sort of chaos erupted in the Palestinian internment camps.”

  Staley sat back on his chair, stunned. “Jesus. Human sacrifice?”

  Baldwin scratched his head. “So it worked, but only temporarily. Did the Palestinians revolt or something?”

  “Reports are sketchy from that point on,” Mary said. “Our analysts don’t believe the Palestinians could have staged a successful revolt by themselves since the Israelis would have outgunned them. We believe it might have been some sort of internal coup, perhaps a faction with either the Israeli government or military that rebelled against the treatment of the Palestinians. Whatever happened, it caused the whole house of cards to come tumbling down. Israel is gone, along with most of the Middle East.”

  Staley rubbed his chin. “All this was all made possible by a book, you say? Some sort of magical book?”

  “That is what we believe,” Mary said. “We’re using all available resources to try and track that book down but we currently have no idea as to its whereabouts. The main piece of intel is that it is possible to at least temporarily defeat these gods, they are not invulnerable. I believe we cannot fight them using conventional means or with the use of nuclear weapons. The former head of our task force, Dr. Paul Dane, advised against the use of modern day weaponry against these gods, he claimed it would be useless. Based on all the evidence we’ve collated now, it seems he was right.”