* * *
With the Star-Spawn's mind blanketing miasma gone, Moshe instantly teleported onto the deck, only to witness the girl fly away, drawing the monstrous Krulgh after her.
“לא! אלוהים אדיר, לא!”
“No! Good God, no!” Moshe yelled, shocked by her course of action.
“זה חזק מדי. לא להילחם בו! אתה לא יכול להילחם בו!”
“It's too powerful! Do not fight it! You can't win!”
As he watched them quickly disappear over the warship a mile away, he heard something behind him. He hadn't taken the time to drink in his surroundings when he teleported.
Moshe stood in the centre of the open helipad. Men surrounded him. Brutally maimed men. Dead men.
Krulgh had animated the slain Navy SEALs – at least the intact ones.
The five reanimated corpses lunged at Moshe!
Chapter 12: The Great Pagan Temple of Shub-Niggurath
Saverne, France, 1930
La Mosquée vide
la cinquième château,
La Mosquée vide's courtyard had long since been reclaimed by Nature. The wild had choked the once immaculate holy garden with weeds and brambles. The crescent moon was little more than a silver sliver in the nighted sky, starlight the only illumination for this sad and forgotten garden. The tangle of wild rose canes gave a thorny illusion of walls or partitions of the garden, their long arching canes somehow sinister in the starlight – ungroomed, un-manicured, somehow with an agenda all their own.
Long tentacle-like cables exited the Mosque's entrance and slithered and snaked their way through the forbidden garden, seemingly competing with the thorny brambles, until, like the radial spokes of a wheel, they all found their way to its hub.
At its centre, in a cleared out section, sat an ugly and greasy gas generator, its motor breaking the silence of the night with its cacophony and sputtering.
“Why – why do you need electricity?” Donita mumbled to herself absently.
“Into the Mosque!” Alia jammed the barrel of her revolver into Otto's ribs, prodding him on. The three continued on.
La Mosquée vide was anything but complete. It had been abandoned during its construction. Abandoned in the sense of having never been finished. But, upon entering what might have once been a holy site, it became clear that it was beyond abandoned now. It was lost. Whether everything holy had been removed, ransacked, or never graced the mosque's halls, was unclear. Now, it was derelict of anything Islamic, empty of anything human, hollow of anything civilized. Its name was appropriate; la Mosquée vide – the Hollow Mosque.
While it could be said to be hollow of anything spiritual, it could not be called empty. It was evident with the feces droppings and scattered assortment of desiccated tiny bones, animals had taken residence or refuge here.
Both Donita and Otto were surprised they hadn't immediately noticed the man holding an odd shaped and oversized suitcase, standing in the great hall. The central hall of worship was a lot to take in. It was easy to have missed many of the minute details in its state of disrepair. Alia's manservant, the Sikh Siad Abdullah, stood with an expression of mixed bewilderment and confusion.
“As you've requested,” Siad began, cautiously scanning the three, “I have acquired a cello violin from le Château de printemps.”
“A cello?” Otto questioned, the concern evident in his voice. He knew all too well that was his choice of musical instruments. “Why on earth would you need a -”
Alia thrust the gun barrel at Otto, silencing him. “Take the stairs to the basement,” Alia's blue eyes motioning towards the rear left wall of the great worship hall.
“Alia,” Donita began speaking to her sister, “Why do you feel that you need a gun?”
Alia cocked the hammer and pointed the gun directly at her sister. Donita flinched slightly, the confusion flooding through her eyes.
“Down the stairs,” Alia commanded. “You too, Mr. Abdullah.”
The group of four followed the electric generator's cables to the stone stairwell and descended.
Siad walked beside Alia Moubayed and spoke quietly, his voice hard and sharp off the echoey stone walls, “What has happened? Why are we here? It has been my understanding that la Mosquée vide is forbidden...”
“All will be apparent shortly,” Alia answered.
The stairs terminated into a subterranean chamber, sparsely furnished with a single candle-wax stained table and a few plain wooden chairs. The entire chamber was lit by candles, their flames gently flickering by a draft issuing from a cave entrance at the rear of the chamber.
The electric generator's cables weaved their way across the floor and into the black maw of the cave. They were greeted by the vacant dead eyes of a young Chinese man – his throat slit – laying in a pool of his own blood.
“Luang!” Donita and Siad echoed one another. Both had known the reclusive student.
“Yes, what a loss,” Alia mumbled callously. “Into the cave.”
“What?” Otto exclaimed. “Where the hell are you taking us?”
“Take one of the candelabras, you too Mr. Siad. Otto, you first, Mr. Siad, you will accompany me at the rear. Now walk!”
* * *
It was difficult to tell how long they had walked. It felt like hours, but in the unexplored, dark and claustrophobic tunnel, time stopped.
Parts of the tunnel walls looked natural while other areas were clearly chiseled and excavated, the chips and pick-marks fresh in the living stone, speckles of mica sparkling from their candle-light.
Every side tunnel or divergent path was ignored, following the ever forward-flowing generator's cables.
* * *
A peculiar man sat in a plain wooden kitchen chair, its paint chipped and pink. It may have been red once. It was out of place here.
The man was strange with an altogether sinister and weird look about him. His long thin hair, black and greasy. The man was pale, sickly looking. His mouth large and his eyes too far apart. There was something disturbingly ichthyoid about him.
He held his cigarette between his dirty thumb and forefinger, the cigarette cupped in his palm. He took a long drag, his fingernails ringed in dirt, some green and spreading; fungoid-like.
He held the cigarette between his lips, his other hand revealing his large Bowie knife, and began picking the dirt from his fingernails. He had time. He had little else to do now but wait.
The legs of his chair cast numerous shadows, creating a multifaceted pattern around him, its legs' shadow counterparts extending in all directions. He was ringed with lights.
He sat in his once-red-chair at the bottom of a large, low depression. The shallow pit was filled with chalk-like sand and tiny infant bones. In its epicenter sat a squat purplish-green sandstone megalith. It was resonate with antiquity beyond human imagination, a pagan altar antediluvian in its eldritch ancientness.
Around the odd man, beyond the outer rim of the depression, was ringed with massive upright monolithic stones. The monstrous sixteen foot high lintel-stones desperately reaching towards the cavern's darkened ceiling but failing miserably. The cavern was massive, cool, and damp. Ancient stalactites dropped from its forty -foot ceiling and merged with some of the lintel-stones.
He took another deep drag of his cigarette and stood up. He heard echoing footsteps approaching. He meandered his way to the upper edge of the basin's lip, leaning against one of the monolithic stones. The stone ring was easily a hundred feet wide.
Outside the Stonehengian ring of menhirs, the far walls of this immense cavern was encircled with electrical cables, branching off into individual electric torches set in their walls. The peculiar man's eyes followed the cables to their source. The cavern's only point of entrance, and waited.
As a group of four people entered the cavern he threw his cigarette butt into the basin. He knew them all.
* * *
The candelabras dropped from Otto's hand as he was awestruck
with the sight before him. The cavern was larger than anything he had ever seen! But his shock was quickly overcome by anger by what he was greeted with.
“You!” Donita yelled at the peculiar man who approached. The strange man carried a large Bowie Knife but sheathed it as he made his way towards the group, his pace picking up the closer the got.
“Scheißkerl! Ezra!” Otto barked.
Ezra Stanton immediately punched Otto across the face, sending the German sprawling on the stone floor. Otto sprang to his feet, fists clenched.
“Ah, ah, ah!” Alia cautioned, waving her revolver at Otto. Ezra smiled his malice. His mouth filled with tiny teeth. “My dear Mr. Riley Smythe, you'll have to wait for that!” she scolded like a schoolteacher.
“You knew?” Siad didn't really ask the question. It was more of a statement to his mistress. “You knew all along who this Riley Smythe was.” The robed Sikh moved towards Donita. “Are you a fool, Ms. Moubayed?” He held Donita's elbow helping her stand. “She needs to sit. You have made her walk too far. Did you forget, your sister's pregnant?”
Ezra leered at Siad and Donita, his teeth bared, sneering, “Oh, we's don't forget that! We's -”
He never got to finish his sentence. Donita, finished feinting fatigue, sucker-punched Ezra in the mouth. The sound reverberated through the monstrous cavern! As Ezra sprang to his feet, he wiped the blood off his lip and chin, spitting out a tooth. “You fucken' bitch!”
Alia, always the calm one, handed the revolved to Ezra. “Bind her to the altar. Mr. Siad?” the cruel curl of her Arabic lips condescending as she spoke to her manservant, “Bring the cello, and Mr. Zann to that chair, please.”
Chapter 13: Ship of Madness
The situation was a desperate one. The order was given for all non-essential crew to abandon ship. The lifeboats were near to the USS John S. McCain only two miles South-East.
All essential crew for operations of the USS Wilbur Curtis weapons systems were to assist the besieged USS Antietam until the last possible moment, then abandon ship. They had time. The ship was taking on water but slowly.
Lieutenant Commander Robert Murdock was a medic and commanding officer tasked to clear the crew and lifeboats from the Wilbur Curtis' port-bow section. Although the situation was loud and seemed chaotic, the men were organized and panic had not set in. This was no different than the drill they had practiced a hundred times.
Lt-Cmdr Murdock was making his final sweep, corralling any stragglers to the lifeboat when he saw the boy. The young prepubescent blond boy, a civilian, lay unconscious on the floor, tucked and pressed against the outer railings.
He was damp and clammy. Lt-Cmdr. Murdock immediately checked the boy for vital signs and a pulse. He was alive, but barely. He performed a quick superficial scan for obvious signs of trauma or injury. Nothing. He opened the boy's eyes. His irises were unresponsive to the light. He had no choice but to move him. He had no time. He would have to further diagnose the boy on the lifeboat. They had to vacate the ship.
He picked up the boy, cradling him in his arms and chest. Lt-Cmdr. Murdock barked orders to surrounding soldiers as he carried the boy to the lifeboat.
* * *
Tamara passed over the USS John S. McCain, tears streaming down her cheeks from her great speed, her jet black hair pulled taut in the racing slipstream, the strange alien energy of R'lyeh transforming her levitation into full blown flight!
When she cleared the warship she rolled onto her back and flew extremely low, her back-draft creating a violent wake in the water.
She knew It would be in pursuit. She knew It would be fast. But when Krulgh broke over the warship, partially flying, partially telescoping, Tamara was surprised how quickly it overtook her!
She was exposed and without cover in the open ocean between the two American warships when the Star-Spawn caught her. In the next instant everything happened fast!
Tamara's flight stopped dead, her mind erecting a shield, deadening the inertia of her sudden stop. The water, absorbing her kinetic energy, exploded, its droplets creating a raining prism of rainbows. In the same instant she threw a gravity-well, the airborne water changing direction, arching into the crushing well.
Krulgh approached at tremendous speed. For a second Tamara thought the juggernaut would plow clean through her, but at the last possible moment its membranous wings snapped open like a parachute, the wind roaring!
Although the monster intended to fall upon her, grappling her like a bird of prey, all it met was her protective psychic shield, its forward motion violently stopped as the crushing field of the gravity-well took its hold.
Tamara dropped her mental shield as Krulgh shifted, displaced in its bizarre method of moving, side-stepping out of the gravity-well.
It was nearly impossible to anticipate Krulgh's movements, with its strange perspective shifting, but between her levitating flight and short distance teleportations, Tamara managed to lure the last Cthulhu Star-Spawn out into the open waters. She only had seconds before Krulgh realized its predicament.
“Gotch ya!” Tamara whispered, making sure the monster heard her thoughts as she teleported to the USS Curtis Wilbur with a blink of light.
Both the USS Curtis Wilbur and USS John S. McCain were a mile off either side of the alien monster. The crews of both warships saw the opportunity. All three Phalanx guns on the two warships opened fire, sounding more like buzz saws than Gatling guns; two-hundred rounds per second burying hot tungsten into the monstrosity.
Its right arm and wing disintegrated into gelatinous goo before the visual on it was lost in a cloud of the creature's erupting body, guts and exploding water. The three automated death-machines fired for a full 30 seconds, emptying their ammo drums.
When the gory debris settled all that remained of Krulgh floated, like a vile oil slick of contaminated alien effluence. The sailors' cheers from either horizon were short lived as the gelatinous goo began reforming. Rather than simply float atop the waves as any natural liquid spill ought to do, the nebulous toxicity seethed and writhed with a sentience all its own, reaching and pulling itself back together; reforming. It made peculiar cracking sounds as it did so, like seaweed's air bladders popping.
Some of the crews of the American warships scrambled to reload new ammo drums into the emptied Phalanx guns. Others watched in silent terror and anticipation. The horrific sea-conch octopoid head of Krulgh rising out of the ocean.
The USS John S. McCain adjacent to the derelict Japanese Yamayuki was the first to have its guns reloaded, but little good it did. The gun's radar and software could find nothing to lock onto. One second Krulgh was a mile starboard and giant, the next its perspective changed and it stood on-board and man-sized!
Its flaccid anemone-like fingers solidifying into bone-like claws as it disemboweled the first sailor.
It latched its tentacled face onto the second sailor's head, and with a motion as swift as pulling off a bandage, tore the man's head and spine off; the sailor silently screaming his shock, the horrific realization that he was already dead too shocking to accept.
Then Krulgh's consistency changed. Shifting towards the incorporeal, the Star-Spawn alien began sinking through the deck, its jelly-like substance percolating sickeningly through the ship's flooring.
As Krulgh became more ghost-like, it opened its hateful mind, extending hundreds of psychic tentacles. They insinuated and snaked their ways into the men's minds, triggering their delusions, hostilities, hatred, paranoia, and lunacy. Within seconds they wove their way throughout the warship and contaminated the minds of the entire crew.
Necropolis: Book 5: R'lyeh Page 9