The Lost Army

by Christopher Golden

  Silently, the dead man drew his sword. He raised it above his head as he charged the front of the tank. Creaghan aimed his sidearm and shot the Persian zombie in the forehead. Its skull exploded in a spray of bone and sand and it fell three feet from the tank. It didn’t move again, but the image of its exploding cranium, sand flying, stuck in Creaghan’s mind.

  The dead soldiers on the lakeshore, the ones Hellboy fought, had pretty much disintegrated into a pile of sand before their eyes. Why wasn’t that happening now, he wondered?

  They’re stronger now, more powerful, driven by a force that is also more powerful. And they needed the corpses for cover. The answers were quick in coming to him. He wasn’t certain they were correct, couldn’t possibly have known for sure either way. But they felt right. The idea that whatever malevolent force drove the dead men was powerful enough to prevent their decomposure disturbed him profoundly. But he was confident that was the truth.

  Captain Michael Creaghan fought harder than ever before to keep faith in himself and his men. They were righteous and just, and they would prevail. He so wanted to believe that.

  Dozens of dead men came over the pile of bodies and launched themselves toward the human soldiers. They howled in open-mouthed silence, brandishing gleaming weapons.

  Soldiers cranked up their vehicles’ engines and turned spotlights on the oncoming dead. The night had come, and so had the true struggle. A hopeless struggle, Creaghan told himself, and then fought against that pessimism.

  Shapiro’s men slaughtered the Persian zombies, but there were simply too many. They began to pull themselves up onto military vehicles, grappling with British, American, and Egyptian soldiers.

  Someone screamed to Creaghan’s right, and he knew before he turned that it was Rickman. A beautifully inscribed crescent-shaped battleaxe with a six-foot handle was buried in Agent Rickman’s chest. The man lay dead on the tank, and the walking corpse that had killed him had one foot on Rickman’s chest, trying to pull its weapon out of the man’s ribcage.

  Creaghan bounded over to the dead Persian warrior and blew its head off at point-blank range. He knelt, swept up Rickman’s SA-80, and took two long strides before leaping to the top of the tank’s swinging turret.

  Then the real slaughter began.

  Scarab beetles poured through the dimensional rift in swarms of thousands. A terrible dark cloud, a plague of Biblical proportions, a vast wave of insects whose chittering grew louder and louder within the cavern. The beetles descended upon the denizens of Hazred’s underground world, upon Hazred himself.

  The sorceror began to scream. His followers wailed in terror and agony. The wave of beetles moved out, away from the altar where Hellboy was chained. Eating. Mar-Ti-Ku’s harbingers were gnawing the flesh from the bones of his worshippers, including Hazred, their high priest. As those further away began to realize what was happening, they turned and fled in terror.

  Screams battled with the clicking of the beetles in a chaotic war of nightmare sounds.

  Dozens of the beetles had landed on Hellboy, but he did not receive a single bite. He was to be Mar-Ti-Ku’s living host, after all. It wouldn’t do to damage him.

  “Some guys have all the luck,” he grumbled.

  Hazred screamed again, and batted the beetles away from his face. Bright orange light the color of ripe pumpkins erupted from his hands, enveloped him, burned the beetles from his body. He was bleeding from tiny wounds all over, eyes wild, drool trailing on his chin. But he was safe, for the moment. His magic made him safe.

  But Hazred wasn’t Hellboy’s concern. His only thought was for Anastasia. He scanned the spot where she had been standing, held fast by Hazred’s sycophants. There were only beetles there now, flying and crawling over the writhing, screaming bodies on the ground.

  “No!” Hellboy screamed.

  He sat up. Simple as that. Hazred was occupied trying to keep himself alive. His magicks were no longer focused on keeping Hellboy bound. When Hellboy surged forward, horror and fury and worry for Anastasia driving him, the iron chains snapped easily.

  “Damn you!” he shouted at Hazred, who didn’t even glance at him.

  Then he screamed her name. “Anastasia!”

  And she answered. Across the cavern, just ahead of the tidal wave of beetles devouring the flesh of Hazred’s followers, of Mar-Ti-Ku’s worshippers, Anastasia stood and cried out to him.

  “Hellboy! Over here! We’ve got to get out of here!” she screamed, standing directly opposite him, across the pool of water which still glowed green. The verdant light pulsed now, as if its energy was being leeched by Mar-Ti-Ku’s impending arrival.

  And what of that? Where was the all-powerful Sumerian sorceror-turned-Elder- God, anyway? It occurred to Hellboy that Hazred might not have finished the spell. That Mar-Ti-Ku might have jumped the gun by sending in his hungry little scarab beetle buddies. Hazred was too terrified to speak, never mind finish any spell.

  Hazred. Hellboy knew Anastasia needed him, that they had to go, but part of him resisted. Hazred deserved more than just a slap on the wrist and an attack by carnivorous beetles. He had slaughtered so many, and caused the deaths of numerous others. Carruthers and Burke, Meaney and Professor Lahiri. They’d all died because of Hazred. And they were only the most recent.

  Hellboy took a step toward Hazred, who still didn’t look at him. The sorceror gibbered incoherently, spittle spraying from his mouth, limned by that bright orange light.

  “Hellboy!” Anastasia called again.

  Then she shrieked. He spun, saw that several beetles had landed on her. Anastasia swiped at the air to keep others away. That decided it. She was much more important than kicking Hazred’s ass.

  “’Stasia!” he roared. “Get in the water!”

  She looked at the pool doubtfully for a moment. Then a beetle landed on her face and she screamed as it bit into her flesh. Anastasia arced a perfect dive into the pool. Hellboy did a cannonball from the stone platform into the water.

  Where the water splashed up on the cavern floor, the beetles flew away, leaving gleaming bones behind, stripped clean of meat. Hellboy took notice, even as he swam to meet Anastasia in the center of the pool.

  “There’s something in the water they don’t like,” Hellboy informed her.

  “How did you know that?” she asked, obviously surprised and pleased.

  “I didn’t,” he confessed. “But there are tunnels underwater here. They’re the only way out without having to go through the swarm again.”

  She stared at him. Anastasia had lost her baseball cap as she dove into the water, and her hair was slicked back behind her now, dripping wet. There was a welt on her face, and a trickle of blood from several places where the beetles had bitten her. Otherwise, she was unscathed.

  Anastasia opened her mouth as if she were about to speak, then closed it again. She gnawed her lower lip, raised her eyebrows, and said, “Maybe we should go now?”

  Hellboy grabbed her and pulled her into his arms. He held her to him tightly, and a tiny burning ember in his gut began to die out. His fear for her safety had been almost overwhelming near the end. It wasn’t over yet, but just being free, knowing he could protect her, made him feel so much better.

  “Good idea,” he replied, and kissed her on the forehead. No romance in the kiss — well, perhaps a trace — but the love of a vital friendship.

  She glanced down, into the water, even as some of the more courageous beetles swooped low over the pool, hoping for something else to nibble on.

  “How long a swim do you think it is?” she asked him.

  Hellboy swatted at an errant scarab beetle, then froze as he considered the question. How long, indeed? They were a great distance underground, but he had suspected the moment he saw the green glowing pool that it connected somehow to the lake tunnels. Their exit, he had presumed, and still believed.

  But how far?

  He could hold his breath for a long time. But what of Anastasia? How long could she go
without taking a breath? How far could she swim? And did they have any other choice?

  “That may be a problem,” he said finally, and focused on her fine features once more. But Anastasia wasn’t looking at him. She was staring over his shoulder, mouth agape and eyes wide with horror. Hellboy whirled in the water.

  Atop the stone platform, Hazred had lay down on the huge granite block which served as an altar. He lay, bathed in orange light, on the shattered chains which Hellboy had snapped only moments earlier. The sorceror’s body bucked and spasmed. Even from that distance, Hellboy could see that Hazred was bleeding from his eyes. His mouth opened, and three scarab beetles crawled out in quick procession, like ants at a picnic.

  The voice which issued from Hazred’s mouth was not the sorceror’s own. It was a horrible, rotting voice, seething with hatred and evil. The voice of Mar-Ti-Ku, most certainly.

  “They dwell within the caverns of the Earth,” the voice cried, “amid the desolate places of the Earth they live. Amid the places between the places unknown in Heaven and Earth. They are arrayed in terror and they have no name. They ride over the mountain of Sunset, and on the mountain of Dawn they cry.”

  Every word like the shattering of glass combined with the sound of dull, jagged blades tearing through human flesh. The voice of evil. Hellboy understood more than merely the words. He understood their intention.

  “Give me a friggin’ break!” he roared, finally giving in to his temper. Mar-Ti-Ku had commandeered Hazred’s body the best he could and was using it to complete the spell which would throw wide the passage between dimensions.

  “Stay here!” he instructed Anastasia.

  “Wait!” she said. “What are you . . . ?”

  “I’ve got a few frustrations and hostilities to work out,” Hellboy snarled as he pulled himself from the pool. He ran across the cavern floor, tail high. Beetles blinded him, beetles crunched beneath the heavy tread of his hooves, beetles tried to get into his mouth. Several landed on him, tried to bite, but couldn’t tear through his thick skin.

  “God damn it!” Hellboy yelled, and brushed the bugs away from his eyes.

  The platform was right in front of him. Hellboy hauled himself up, expecting to trounce Hazred, prepared to do whatever it took to keep Mar-Ti-Ku from returning to the Earthly plane. He had no idea what the Sumerian really was . . . or even if the story Mar-Ti-Ku had fed Hazred all those years ago was even true. It might never have been human at all. There was no way to tell, no way to know what to expect.

  He sure didn’t expect to get kicked in the face while he brought his hooves under him and tried to stand. But Hazred was up, and looming over him. The sorceror caught Hellboy under the chin with his bony foot. A blow that should have done little more than turn Hellboy’s head, but instead sent him reeling backwards off the platform.

  Hazred jumped off after him, stalked toward him as Hellboy scrambled to his feet. The sorceror, magically powered by Mar-Ti-Ku, clamped an iron grip on Hellboy’s throat and actually lifted him off the ground. An impossible feat for anyone remotely human.

  “Through the caverns of the Earth they creep!” Hazred announced in Mar-Ti-Ku’s death-cry of a voice. “Their place is outside our place, and between the angles of the Earth. They lie in wait, crouching for the sacrifice.”

  Hazred brought his face within inches of Hellboy’s. He could smell the sorceror’s rancid breath, the stink of his rotting teeth.

  “They are the children of the underworld!” Hazred screamed. “Falling like rain from the sky! Issuing like mist from the Earth! They . . .”

  With all his strength, Hellboy grabbed Hazred’s shoulders and slammed his own head forward. His skull knocked against the sorceror’s with an echoing crack. Hazred let him go and stumbled backward.

  “Shut up,” Hellboy ordered. “Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!”

  “Uruku they are, giant larvae, feeding on the blood . . . ,” Hazred cried.

  “That’s it! That’s enough!” Hellboy shouted, and then he was gone, lost in his temper, over the edge. “Now you’ve really pissed me off!”

  He launched himself at Hazred. The sorceror reached for his throat again, but Hellboy knocked his hand away. Beetles chittered nearby, but most of them were underhoof now, bloated with human flesh, weighted down. Hellboy grabbed Hazred by the shoulder and pummeled the sorceror’s face with his stone fist. Hazred’s head snapped back, cracked against the granite platform, bounced. He looked up as Hellboy came at him again, and grinned.

  Hazred began to float, to levitate off the ground. He drifted, rapidly rising above the platform. Hellboy scrambled up after him, barking his shin on the platform’s edge. Hazred continued to rise. Hellboy stood on the platform. In front of him, the dimensional doorway yawned wide, and tendrils of some horrid-smelling yellow gas snaked through it, feeling the air like fingers, searching.

  Invading.

  Hazred floated above the cavern floor, midway between the platform and the stairs to the brass cathedral; floated, in fact, just above the dimensional doorway which looked like nothing so much as a cigarette burn on the cloth of reality.

  “No door can stop them!” Hazred cried. “No bolt can . . .”

  Fury driving him, Hellboy leaped on top of the stone altar, kicking his chains aside. He swung his arms low for momentum, gathered his strength, and jumped.

  Hazred looked surprised when Hellboy’s hands clamped around his ankles, crushing the bones with a sound like crumbling plaster. His weight dragged them both down on top of the stairs. Hazred tried to speak again, but Hellboy crushed his windpipe with a quick jerk of his right hand. He hauled back his stone fist, righteous anger overwhelming him, and let it fall.

  The sorceror’s face exploded in a spray of sand and bone under the force of the blow, and Hellboy’s fist shattered the bronze stairs beneath them. There was a terrible rumbling, a profound shifting of the Earth, and a massive crack opened along the center of the stairwell. The stairs ripped apart as if an earthquake had struck, but the rift did not end at the top of the steps. The crack continued up the side of the cathedral, the bronze tearing itself apart.

  Hellboy scrambled backward, falling down the last few steps to avoid the growing rift. He stood for a moment in front of the dwindling dimensional gate and looked up at the crumbling cathedral. Its pinnacle, which he had thought reached nearly to the top of the cavern, split just as the rest of the building had.

  The tip snapped half a dozen feet from the top, and that six feet just hung there from the roof of the cavern. The realization was fast. The cathedral had not only been the center of the cavern, but its central support. The pinnacle had actually reached the ceiling, actually held up the weight of the desert above.

  But now it was shattered.

  The rumbling grew worse. To it was added an additional, terrible sound, a grating noise that did not bode well. A long crack suddenly appeared in the cavern’s roof, and massive chunks of rock began to fall all around the stone and iron village. Hellboy saw several people who had survived the beetles running for cover once more. He tried to feel bad for them, but couldn’t. Not after all they had done.

  Which reminded him of Hazred. The sorceror had crumbled to dust just like the dead Persian soldiers Hellboy had fought. He knew then that the man had been dead, not immortal. Somehow his magic had allowed him to retain himself, to stay animated and in control. But he fell apart just like any ancient corpse.

  A hunk of stone hit Hellboy on the head, clacking against the stump of a horn.

  “What the bloody hell are you waiting for?” Anastasia screamed.

  Hellboy turned, saw her head poking out of the pool, which still pulsed a weird green, and whatever trance he’d been in broke instantly.

  “Good question!” he called, and ran for the water, scarab shells crunching under his hooves. Absurdly, the sound reminded him of plastic bubble wrap.

  He dove in the water and swam to Anastasia.

  “How long can you hold your breath
?” he asked.

  “It’ll have to be long enough,” she replied.

  He was afraid for her again, but they didn’t have much choice. They went under and swam for the largest tunnel, the one from which the green glow emanated.

  Time to find out what the source of the glow really was.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  —

  Creaghan stood twenty feet away from the tank he’d been laying on only minutes before. Colonel Shapiro stood by him, shoulder to shoulder. They were among the fifty or so humans still moving, still alive, still shooting in the clearing. The corpses, both long-dead Persians and newly slaughtered soldiers, were piled up on all sides like some grotesque atoll island of carrion and gore.

  “Die!” Colonel Shapiro screamed, letting loose a string of invectives with a hail of bullets from an SA-80 he had snatched from a dead man’s hands.

  Creaghan didn’t even recognize the weapon he was using. Egyptian issue he thought. Not that it mattered. They had another few minutes to live, certainly no more. The odds were overwhelming. The Persian dead swarmed over their barricade, climbed over the mountain of corpses and moved relentlessly forward, intent upon the total destruction of any breathing human being in sight.

  The sandstorm had thinned, the winds died down. Soon it would be over. The eyes were gone from the sky, and Creaghan assumed that whatever had powered the storm was otherwise engaged. Initially, he’d hoped that would mean the zombie soldiers would slow down as well, or even fall dead in their tracks. But it wasn’t to be. They were as powerful and as vicious as ever. The ground was muddy with blood underfoot, and when Creaghan pulled his boot up to take a step back, there was a nauseating, sucking sound.

  Deep within Captain Creaghan was a white-hot core of rage which held the chill of despair at bay. Surrender would have been so simple, but he had never been anything like simple, no matter what anyone else said.