“There’s so much life,” Mercury whispered.
“Yes.” I took position beside her, having picked up a pair of binoculars before exiting the jeep. Removing my dust mask, I slid it into my pocket before scanning the horizon. “They’ve already started planting the seeds of their trees beyond the borders of the valley. Something about the valley’s foliage is remarkably durable. They attribute it to the blessings of their goddess Shub-Niggurath.”
“Finally a god who does something good.” Mercury couldn’t help but continue to stare at the sight before her. I couldn’t really blame her; I’d had much the same reaction when first viewing Ghoul Pass. It existed in defiance of the Rising, showing life continued and would continue to do so in the face of Armageddon. Noticing the intense look on my face, she asked, “What are we looking for?”
“Danger.”
“Surely there can’t be anything hostile in this place. It’s like paradise.”
“There are things worse than serpents in this garden,” I replied. “The locals were only semi-friendly to my team at the best of times. The only reason we were accepted that much is I had my team offer up sacrifices to Shub-Niggurath.”
“Who or what?”
“Don’t ask.”
Surveying the landscape, I searched for the tiny little paths which existed between the trees. Despite its appearance of being a wild and untamed wilderness, Ghoul Pass was anything but. Its pagan settlers had carefully cultivated it, making it a source of food and protection for its human population. I’d charted every one of the paths for New Arkham, despite knowing they’d never bother to send trade delegations or even attempt to enforce some form of sovereignty over the place.
“Do you see anything?” Mercury asked, impatiently. “Do you think they have apples? I’ve never had apples. They look delicious in pictures.”
“Quiet.”
My eyes rested onto an unsettling sight. A caravan of travelers on foot mixed with mutated, splotchy-skinned bears pulling carts was moving down the path from Scrapyard. That wouldn’t have drawn much concern if not for the fact that the travelers were heavily armed, tattooed, and deformed bandits flying a gold-and-green banner containing the starfish-like Elder Sign.
The mark of Cthulhu was on several of their animals. It was a strange combination since the Elder Sign was a traditional ward against the Great Old Ones’ influence. Were these Ward’s people? More of the Reanimation-capable tribesmen? My concern over their paraphernalia vanished when I saw the contents of their carts. The crude vehicles contained cages filled with children, dozens of children. There were a few adults mixed in but most were adolescent or younger.
Leading this dread procession was a priest wearing a homespun robe and a crudely stitched together brown leather mask with tendrils hanging down the front of his face. Riding on the top of a hideous pale horse, the figure held up a staff tipped with a jewel-covered human skull.
“Shit,” I cursed.
“What?” Mercury said, “What’s going on?”
“Slavers,” I practically spit the word out. “Cthulhu worshipers, too.”
“What? Them? Fuck.”
“Yes,” I said.
Mercury had a layman’s knowledge of the Wasteland and only clinical knowledge of the Great Old Ones—but everyone knew the name of Cthulhu. Countless cults to the Great Old Ones existed in the Wasteland, but the worst were the devotees of that particular monster.
The cults of Cthulhu engaged in every form of perversity imaginable and claimed to possess supernatural powers of the highest order. All of this despite the fact none of them could produce any evidence that their god even knew they were alive, let alone approved of their actions.
“Damn,” Mercury said as I handed her the binoculars. Taking a look at what I’d been gazing at, she sighed. “Poor bastards.”
“Not for long.” I returned a few moments later, carrying a sniper rifle she’d packed.
“Booth, what the hell are you doing?” Mercury stared at me while I placed the rifle on a tripod over the edge.
“I’m about to snipe someone,” I answered, stating the obvious. “Preferably, a lot of someones.”
“I can see that,” Mercury said, confused. “Why?”
“They’re slavers.” It should have been answer enough for any rational person. Traffickers and peddlers in flesh were the lowest of the low, below even the fact they were worshipers of the Great Old Ones.
“And?”
“They’re slavers,” I repeated, a little forcibly. “Deranged cultists, too. The fate that awaits their prisoners if we let them go is nightmarish. You haven’t seen true horror until you’ve seen the aftereffects.”
“I’ve tortured people.” Her voice held more than a little hint of scorn. Oddly, her attitude didn’t reflect someone genuinely remorseful, which either meant she was a sociopath or she had remarkable skills at compartmentalization. Then again, who was I to judge? I’d done plenty of things to survive in this world. The sounds of tribal peoples’ screams as I gunned them down for trying to loot food from New Arkham caravans filled the back of my mind.
Deciding to take Mercury at her word for the time being, I said, “Then I suggest you consider whether or not it’s time for you to start paying humanity back for your actions.”
Mercury blinked, apparently processing what I just said. “Go kill the bastards.”
“Thank you.”
I put the leader of the caravan in my sights and proceeded to start shooting.
Chapter Eight
Sniper training was something every R&E Ranger underwent. Bullets didn’t always kill what you faced in the Wasteland but when they did, you wanted to be as far away from your target as possible. The slavers below were, at least at first glance, human. That meant it should have been easy killing them all. Somehow I knew it wasn’t going to be.
It went well at first, my first shot going squarely through the lead slaver’s masked skull. I then focused on a woman in a leather jacket. She wore a necklace of finger bones, marking her as a trophy taker. She, too, went down easily enough. Following her was a man covered in blood-colored tattoos, sporting a Mohawk, and wearing a belt covered in scalps.
I enjoyed killing them. It made me feel more human.
“This is justice. The only justice which exists in this world. The one I choose to deliver,” I said, giving a grim smile as I shot a chubby-looking man who had filed his teeth down to razor-sharp incisors.
“Uh, Booth …” Mercury leaned down and tapped me on the shoulder. “Something’s happening.”
“Not now,” I said, focusing in on the banner carrier for the slaver gang. He was running around confused, not fully aware of what was going on but desperate to find some cover. Unlike the rest of the gang, he hadn’t yet found any. I mercifully relieved him of his life, taking a head shot which sent his body spiraling to the ground.
“Damn, the rest of them are behind their carts and slaves,” I grumbled, falling back to find a new firing position. It was unlikely they could hit me from this point, but all of my efforts would be for nothing if they were able to get away with their cargo.
“Booth!” Mercury called out. “Something’s happening!”
“What?” I looked up at her. That was when I noticed the light was disappearing from the sky. Whereas once there was a clear morning sky, a black set of clouds covered the entirety of the pass now. The air crackled against my face, now charged with static electricity. I knew instantly what was happening: a summoning. Not a small one like the one my wife had performed, either, but something big from the Dreamlands or a distant world.
Rotating my sniper rifle, I looked through the scope at the chief slaver’s corpse. Despite having a visible hole through his head, he’d gotten up off the ground and was chanting. Waving his skull-tipped staff around, I realized I’d underestimated the magic of the Wasteland.
“Bastard,” I muttered before snapping the rifle’s magazine into place and running back to the jeep. There, I gr
abbed a case of flamer rounds. They hadn’t been all that effective against the Reanimated but they were all I had right now. Reloading, I ran back to where I’d been lying before.
I took position to aim at the magician, intending to finish the job I’d started moments before. The next shot took most of the chief slaver’s head off, a second shot hitting him in the heart. From there, the man’s body became a mass of fire. As his robes burned off of him, I saw hideous wormlike figures moving in the flames. Whatever it was, it wasn’t remotely human. Eventually, the worms collapsed into several disgusting piles and continued to burn. Unfortunately, it was too late to stop whatever the inhuman slaver had been doing earlier.
“Booth, it’s still coming!” Mercury shouted. I could hear her scrambling for a weapon in the back.
Spinning around, I saw the ground underneath the jeep begin to crack. The Mark-7 was carelessly thrown to the side as a huge slimy, tapeworm-like creature bashed itself up through the ground. The top of its mouth opened up four separate mandibles to expose the vicious, gaping maw it possessed. I had never known a worm to scream but that’s what it did, letting forth a cry into the air. Once it broke loose from the ground, it kept rising until it was close to fifty feet in the air.
“Yeah, that’s bad.” I made the understatement of the decade, staring up at the creature. I knew instantly what it was, one of the Demon-Beasts of the Abyss Beyond Time, an Earthmover.
I’d seen Earthmovers before. I’d witnessed the mammoth creatures devour whole regions of scrubland, transforming whatever they passed through into empty desert. This particular specimen was only a baby, yet it would destroy all of Ghoul Pass and anything else in the immediate area if it was left unchecked. Even worse would be what happened if it tasted human flesh. Once Earthmovers did, they entered a blood fury not quenched until they were destroyed. Unfortunately, I’d just killed the only person capable of sending the Earthmover back where it came from.
“What’s the plan?” Mercury shouted as the creature reared its head and prepared to bring its mouth down upon me. She had a pistol in her hands which, sadly, wasn’t going to be of much use. Still, she got points for effort.
“Run away!” I shouted, rushing out of the creature’s path, watching it descend on the edge of the cliff and snap it off into the valley below, clearly trying to swallow me whole.
“What!” Mercury shouted, seeking refuge behind the jeep that had just been turned over.
The creature seemed to be disorientated, as much as you might discern the opinions of a slime-covered worm from another reality. That was about my only advantage as the Cthulhu cultists’ bullets bounced off against the monster’s thick hide. Earthmovers, unfortunately, definitely fit under the category of things bullets didn’t affect.
“Running away is the plan!” I shouted as I grabbed Mercury by the arm and ran for the tunnel, watching the Earthmover grab the jeep with its mandibles and push it down its throat. It took only seconds to digest the remains, forcing it down its long tube-like body. The creature was still half-inside the cliff face, either partially still in its own home dimension or burrowed in the ground beneath our feet.
“Yeah, this is bad,” I muttered, realizing there was no way to get away from this thing. Earthmovers could be miles in length.
“Oh no,” Mercury said, looking at it.
Handing her the sniper rifle, I nodded to her. “Shoot at it!”
“Are you insane?”
“Probably!” I made a running dash to where the jeep had been overturned. A number of items had spilled out of the ground when it was knocked over, valuable items that just might mean our salvation.
Mercury, showing she had courage to face the horrors of the Wasteland, fired repeatedly. It didn’t take much skill not to miss such a thing but each shot bounced off against its otherworldly hide. That was expected. I just needed her to distract it while I made a grab for a bandolier of grenades which had fallen nearby. With the creature’s attention focused squarely on Mercury, I pulled out a pill, and hurled them all simultaneously at the base of the Earthmover’s sixty-foot stalk. They were designed to detonate if one exploded, a feature meant to kill E.B.E.s rather than people. I had about three seconds before it swallowed her whole.
It turned out, I only needed one.
The explosion was tremendous, causing a rumble through its body as bits of slimy flesh were thrown left and right. Six grenades going off more or less at once wasn’t enough to kill the thing; instead it just caused it to lose mobility. The mammoth creature fell over the side of the cliff face, its wounded body no longer able to support its weight. Now it was flailing about and doing its best to survive, a futile gesture given how much damage it had sustained. I ran over to Mercury’s side and held her steady. She was clutching onto the sniper rifle, still firing from its rifle magazine.
Even wounded, the creature lived several more minutes, finally ceasing its struggles as it bled out from the wounds I’d given it. I couldn’t hate the creature. It had been brought here against its will and undoubtedly had been more confused than malicious, yet I wasn’t sorry to see it perish. Earthmovers were too powerful to live on the same world as humanity. They belonged in whatever strange and distant realm where they had evolved.
“Is it dead?” Mercury huffed, looking shell-shocked from both her first battle and the appearance of a being far above humanity.
“More likely, it’s regenerating back on whatever world it was drawn from. We only saw a small portion of it.” I shook my head. “The question concerning me now is whether the slavers are still alive.”
Mercury shot me a furious look which was justified since I’d just gotten all of our supplies destroyed. “Who gives a damn about the slavers?”
“The slaves,” I replied.
I’d always had something of an eerie calm around the monsters of the Cthulhu Cycle. Some had speculated that it was because there was something fundamentally wrong with me. Others believed it was a function of humanity finally adapting to the horrors around it, though few others displayed any such inclinations in the Remnant. For me? I believed it was exposure to the blackest parts of humanity as a young child. My father’s betrayal had shattered any sense of safety I might have had early on. There was nowhere to go but up.
Mercury took a deep breath, calming her down. “Fine. Go check on your natives.”
“Of course,” I said, thinking it strange it had only taken a few decades for the Remnant’s citizens to start thinking of their fellow Americans as backward primitives unworthy of anything but scorn. That was one area where we were worse than the monsters and far from the last.
Taking the sniper rifle from her hands, I looked through its scope back at the slavers’ caravan. I discovered the remaining cultists had fled. I shouldn’t have been surprised; seeing their leader killed and the arrival of an Earthmover was probably more than the average cultist of Cthulhu was prepared to deal with.
Leaving Mercury behind me, I started walking down a path carved into the side of the canyon’s walls. Hopefully, it would take me directly to the path they’d been traveling. Scattering the cultists wasn’t enough; they could always just return later to reclaim their “cargo.”
The slaves needed to be returned to their village and the remaining slavers hunted down. If I was going to make a difference in this world, I had to start with the human evils rather than the inhuman ones, mostly because the inhuman ones were too powerful for humanity even at its height.
Hoisting my sniper rifle, more than a little angered I no longer had any of the other weapons we packed, I hoped I wouldn’t have to engage any of the slavers at a short distance. The pathway was long and hard but not treacherous, which meant Mercury was able to catch up to me quickly. We were about halfway down when she started talking again.
“That was … interesting,” Mercury said, walking close behind me. She seemed almost exhilarated now—which was insane given what the Earthmover could have done to us. “I’ve seen the Great Old Ones’
servant races before, but that was the first time I’ve seen a genuine extra-dimensional being. That mutant we encountered in the Wasteland was nothing compared to it.”
“An E.B.E. is an E.B.E.” I muttered the erroneous Remnant adage before using my scope to scan the valley treetops one more time.
If we went any farther down, we’d lose the high ground and any visuals they afforded. I didn’t see any of the cultists through the thick foliage, which didn’t mean they weren’t there. I’d only killed a small portion of the slavers and it wouldn’t take more than the element of surprise to return the favor if the survivors came back. Dammit, I hated unknowns.
“So, why did you do it?” Mercury asked, surprising me.
“Do what?” I said, holding my rifle before me as we finally reached the Pass’s surface. The trees were less magnificent up close. Instead, they were ominous. Despite the fact the valley’s growth was less than a century old, all of the trees looked positively primordial. The tree trunks were twisted and creaked as a wind passed through their leaves.
Most were covered in moss, ignoring the old scout adage it only grew in the North. A few sprouted fruit from their leaves but it was no recognizable human fruit, often resembling some bizarre hybrid between apples and oranges.
“Intervene,” Mercury said, trying not to show how the environment affected her. Where I was wary, it was clear everything around her was a source of fascination. She actually paused to walk over and poke a four-foot-tall mushroom, ignoring the fact doing so could be dangerous in the extreme. “I mean, you didn’t derive any benefit from it. It also exposes us to considerable danger. Is it because you’ve made some pact with the locals?”
“It was the right thing to do.”
“No, seriously,” Mercury said, patting me on the shoulder. “You can tell me.”
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