They lapped it up with their tongues, rubbed the ichor into their eyes and privates and then rushed in to feed.
Brown howled like a child against Tieg’s hand. Tieg held fast, until he felt the all-too familiar shudder of a man about to heave. He let go just as Brown vomited all over the passenger side door.
The squad-car pattered across the Alameda Boulevard, twisting through the midnight pile-up. A Ford Manticore skittered past them, city lights refracting across its glistening carapace. Tieg twisted the stick on the squad-car, making a vogt-turn into 8th Street. Their mount purred as it began to move across the face of an apartment building, in defiance of gravity.
“You touch me like that again, Tieg, I swear to God I’ll clock you,” Brown growled, working the snuff against the lining of his gums.
“Wasn’t my fault. You flaked out and you know it,” Tieg said, matter-of-factly.
Brown rolled down the window, spat a deep-brown gob of spit against an eight-story porch and turned back to face him. “You a fish-stick, Tieg?”
Tieg kept his eyes ahead, at the fast-approaching rooftop. He eased the squad car into gear, climbing up on the roof and eased it down into a thon-incline. “Piss off, Brown.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Tieg,” Brown insisted, breaking into a white-toothed, shit-eating grin. “Way you acted around them drowneys, the things you knew; hell, you could say you knew them in the Biblical sense, you dig?”
Tieg twisted the wheel at the last second. The squad-car lurched to the right, sending Brown to slam against the reinforced window. A crack blossomed into existence, stained with drops of his blood. Without missing a beat, the glass began to knit itself around the material. Brown growled like an animal, reaching for his gun. Tieg braked hard, causing Brown to lurch forward and slam his forehead against the dashboard. It made a hollow, thumping sound as it collided.
“You better get your seat-belt fastened, Brown; it’s gonna be a bumpy ride back to the station.”
Brown sneered, daubing the cut on his forehead with a handkerchief, cussing all the while. Tieg did his damnedest to keep himself from smashing his fist against Brown’s pearly-white teeth.
“Thank you, for keeping them out,” Hu’loa said, as she cupped his face between her webbed fingers. Her breath smelled faintly of blood and fear. Her gills still dripped with fresh sea-water, carried from the unknowable depths near the South Coronado.
They had met in the Coronado Beach grotto, inside the sanctum grown in secret from smuggled coral reef. Tieg could already hear the distant babble of conversation across its many layers, the moans of pleasure that wafted up from the darkness below. He wasn’t the first one to set foot in this place, but he was the only one that had ever been allowed to get past the coral-mesh threshold.
“It was the least I could do,” he whispered. She drew closer to him, her scales clinging to his shirt. He could feel her slowly oozing into him, their bodies merging languorously under the dead god’s hewn-obsidian gaze. “Chu’lul was a good parr.”
“Chu’lul was a stupid parr who thought he could peddle gunk to split-toes and get away with it. But he was of our school and he deserved a proper farewell.” Hu’loa sighed and turned to caress the figurine’s head, as if to close its eyes. Her lips brushed against his and Tieg shuddered with ecstasy.
“I guess the only thing you really got from the split-toes was shame,” he laughed, pressing his face against her breasts. Hu’loa was halfway through her shedding, her body still retaining the breasts and buttocks of its teenage chrysalis. Her skin had long since grown a full set of scales and the second row of teeth had begun to push back her pearly whites, but Tieg knew this was only temporary. It was only a matter of time before the shape he had known and loved would fade and another, unknowable form would take its place.
“What? You thought land-crawlers invented miscegenation? We’ve been far more hateful and savage than you have been for longer than you imagine,” she said, managing a smile. Her hands moved down across his belly, prying his legs gently apart. “Our kind was hatched in the darkest depths of the Mother-Sea, made to serve a host of uncaring gods for millennia. We were foot-soldiers in the service of impossibly cruel tyrants for a hundred generations. When the war was done, we were put under lock and key inside a sunken city, to breed and serve and die for a dead God, until we finally broke free. Your kind doesn’t know the first thing about true hate.”
“But we took from you. We pilfered your secrets and we stole your magic. We make you huddle in the shores,” Tieg managed through sighs of pleasure, as he felt Hu’loa’s warmth envelop him.
“We gave you little. But you gave us the whole wide sea,” she said, letting out a lilting trill of joy. They mated passionately under the gaze of the dead god. When her claws raked jagged red lines across the scarred range of his flesh, Tieg howled with pleasure.
It didn’t take long for Brown’s put-down to stick in the precinct. Tieg was from L.A. after all and the place was drowney central. He had come here on a moment’s notice after the Lamburg incident but maybe, just maybe—word went around—that wasn’t the whole story.
Tieg did his best to ignore the cat-calls and the mess of fish-guts stuffed in his drawer. Every day he kept himself from just knocking Brown on his ass, whenever he’d catch him doing his little flipper dance from the corner of his eye. Tieg was a good cop, a proper cop. For a while, he even convinced himself that he could go without getting into a fight while he was on duty.
That was, until Brown went ga-ga in Petco Park.
“What have we here?” Brown’s voice was tinged with pure malice, as he stepped out of the squad car. Tieg’s eyes darted to him, then to the massing throng across the green. Already, he could see Hu’loa and her school gathering in a tight-knitted circle at the center, clumsily-drawn protest signs at the ready. He squinted to look at the legend scrawled across them in clumsy handwriting:
WE CAME FIRST
Tieg jumped out of the squad car, gunning for Brown. Already, he could see him fingering the baton strapped on the holster on his waist.
“Brown, no! Listen to me, you gotta cool it, okay?”
“Take a hike, fish-stick,” Brown spat, releasing the clasp on his baton. Tieg saw the glint in his eyes, the trigger-happy look he’d come to know from the L.A beat cops that hit the streets aching for a fight.
“You can’t go in there, not like that! They just buried one of their own and they got all riled up. If you try to pull a tough-guy stunt, they’re going to kill you!”
Brown whipped around, grasping Tieg by the collar. He fought back, even as Brown twisted just enough to block his windpipe. “You wanna protect your squeeze, fish stick? Is that it?” he said, pushing Tieg back, spitting just as his body hit the ground. “Call it in if you want, I don’t give a good goddamn. But you get in my way again and I will bust your head open.”
Tieg watched as Brown made his way toward the protesters, their signs held high already. He twisted his baton and whistled, before bringing it down on the first Deep One, a parr barely a day over sixteen. It made a dry, thunking noise as it struck the side of his skull.
“This is an illegal gathering! Drowneys, disperse or be forcefully removed from the premises!” he barked, before kicking the downed parr with everything he had. Someone howled, from the back of the throng. Tieg scrambled up to grab Brown, rushing to stop him from getting himself deeper into trouble. Hu’loa broke from the line, kneeling beside the growling parr at Brown’s feet. Brown’s baton whistled through the air, before smashing into her teeth. Tieg saw them fly out from the red mess of her mouth, glistening like freshwater pearls in the sunlight. His hand gripped his service pistol, bringing the oak wood handle down on the back of the officer’s head in one fluid motion. Brown’s head snapped forward. He staggered, turning to look at Tieg just as he brought the gun down on his head again, whipping his lips. On the second blow, the cylinder glanced off his front teeth. The third one caused the front sights to cut a
long, deep gash into his cheeks. Brown spat blood and swung his baton once, blindly, whipping Tieg against his side. Tieg howled like a madman and brought his gun down again and again, until the handle was slick with blood.
“What did you do?” Hu’loa howled through the mess of her mouth in horror. “Tieg, what the hell did you do?”
Tieg stuttered, crashing hard after the post-adrenaline low. He looked at Hu’Loa, her features bobbing in and out of focus in his addled mind. He eyeballed the park around him, stared in horror at the morbidly curious that circled around the scene, the horrified squares snapping photos of the carnage. Already, he knew, the word had gone out across the pulsing mess of babbling cartilage that ran under the skin of the city. He could feel the world around him fraying at the seams.
“Just run.” Hu’loa said, cupping his head in her hands.
“He hurt you, oh God, he hurt you.”
“You need to go.”
“I’m so sorry I couldn’t stop him, I’m so sorry…”
Hu’loa pushed Tieg away, just hard enough to make him go. Sparing one last glance at the writhing, moaning mess that was Officer Brown, he made for the squad car, popped the clutch and hauled ass.
There were places to hide in San Diego, even with half its police force on his tail. The city was filled to the brim with hidden boulevards, hidden just below arcane intersections. Impromptu lots, hidden from view, lurked in the shadows of apartment buildings. When the Deep Ones gave the secrets of their sacred geometry to mankind, they made sure to keep the juiciest bits of info to themselves.
Tieg had learned about these arcane spaces, of the directions that were kept safe. In Carlsbad, a space-shaper had shared with him the signs which allowed a tesseract to unfold into a whole new plane of dimensions. From a brood-queen in Encinitas, he had garnered the secret commands that were embedded in the subconscious of the new breeds of cars. He could stop one dead in its tracks with a command, or send it careening off into the opposite direction with a flick of his wrist.
“R’Lyeh taught us to harness our hate. On land, we will finally put it to use,” Chu’lul had babbled in the strictest confidence, halfway through his algae high. “All we have to do is wait for the split-toes to slip up.”
Chu’lul had taught Tieg the secret whispers that allowed all standard-issue arcane-locked doors to open. He had taught him the secret gesture that caused the money-machines to cough up their bounty. Any man with artificial organs spawned from Deep One meat-tanks, Tieg could make them seize up just by drawing a sign in the air.
For three days, Tieg skulked in hidden San Diego, emerging only to forage for food. For three nights, he watched the city burn in places, saw the waters of San Diego Bay rise in a freak tsunami that drowned Fiddler’s cove and heard of an outbreak of strange coral infesting the beaches.
On the dawn of the fourth day, Tieg finally found the strength to break cover and find Hu’loa.
“You have to make them stop this!” Tieg howled over the thunder of artillery, battering the coral grotto. A lot of the fish-sticks had spilled the beans, as soon as the fighting broke out.
“The Oorl believes that we can handle their shelling. Most of the others think the same. They are out for blood, Tieg,” Hu’loa managed through gritted teeth. Tieg pulled her close, resting against her diminished breasts. Her new row of teeth had almost burst from the gums. Her pearly white smile was a gruesome jigsaw of crooked ivory.
“You think they’ll stop at the shelling? Do you have any idea what kind of weapons they have in store? They can obliterate your cities, if you push them. Keep going like this and they’ll opt for genocide!”
“So what do we do? Are we supposed to lay down our arms and die? We won’t have that, Tieg. I won’t have that,” Hu’loa managed. She sobbed, but no tears came from her jet-black eyes. Tieg nodded, running his hands over the smooth scales of her face.
“We run. The two of us. We hide in the folds between the cities and wait this out. Whichever way it turns out, we can make it work, as long as we have each other,” Tieg whispered. Hu’loa’s stunned expression stopped him dead in his tracks.
“Please.”
Her hands pushed against his chest, shoving him with the carefully constrained strength of an inhuman warrior. It was enough to make Tieg almost end up sprawled on the floor.
“You go. Find me when it’s over,” Hu’loa said, passing by him on her way to the door. Tieg struggled to his feet.
“There’s no way out of this! Not for you, not for anyone! Don’t go!” he pleaded, his voice echoing across the strata of coral. A chorus of inhuman cackling rose up to meet him.
Tieg ran like hell. He hid like an animal, in the places where the cities were thick with hidden dimensions. When he was hungry, he would eat. When he became thirsty, he would dare some running water, but he knew the Deep Ones had tainted it, made it bitter and metallic.
At nights, he would peek out from his hiding places and watch the fighting in the streets. When those came too close for comfort he moved out of San Diego, peeking into reality only to see a thick cloud of white phosphorus snaking out along the California coastline.
In Cleveland, he found that San Ysidoro and Chula Vista had been hammered to oblivion by tidal waves. In response, the army dumped VX into the water. That killed the fish, but it made a hell of a lot of drowneys wash ashore. In response, an outbreak of freak childbirths broke out along the length and breadth of the continent. The mewling, skinless things screamed like women in the nurseries. Every single one of them had to be put down.
By the time Tieg had made it to the outskirts of Texas, Florida was gone. New York was a hellscape of coral. From Massachusetts to Delaware, a rain of obsidian chits had unleashed swarms of howling insects that could pick a man clean in ten seconds flat. Tieg dared to pilfer a newspaper once, from an abandoned newsstand somewhere in Alabama. He saw Hu’loa’s face on the front page, smashed and burned beyond recognition. They had hung her in Dover Square. Her one good eye stared out into the distance, fixed into that nebulous moment in time when she knew Tieg would see her week-old obituary. To Tieg, she seemed downright disappointed.
The fighting died down, eventually. Tieg didn’t dare try to ask who had won. He knew, from what radio broadcasts still looped in the airways, that the coastline was gone. From scattered whispers, he knew that some of the cities inland were still burning. From what he had gleaned, there were places that had been so thoroughly blasted with radiation, that they would never really be inhabitable again. Within the year, that same radiation would probably drift in the wind to poison every other poor bastard that was still hopping around under the sun.
“Ain’t that a dirty, goddamn mess,” Tieg said, to no one in particular. He chanced one last glance at the sky, hazy with radiation’s afterglow, took in the distant whiff of sea breeze, mixed with clotted blood, and stepped deeper into the folds beneath the world, searching perhaps for another world, another Earth, another Hu’loa.
The Night They Drove Cro Magnon Down
D.A. Madigan
ALL THIS TUCK PLACE IN LATE ’64…NOVEMB’R, AH B’LIEVES. YASSUH, that seems rah’t. Least as best Ah can ’member, now, so long a piece afta’ards.
We’ud beat the Yankees back in three…no, fowah…recent battles and we was feelin’ powerful smart. Afta Bragg broke that gods-damned Semite Jehovah worshippah Rosecrans at Chattanooga in late ’63, it war lahk we jest never looked back. We rolled on up through West Virginny, goin’ back inta Pennsylvania along the same busted, blasted ground we all’d just retreated ovah aftah the first Battle o’ Gettysburg. O’ course, the Second Battle o’ Gettysburg went just a might bettah fo’ us, and that bastard slave stealer Lincoln sent off a telegram to President Davis askin’ to meet him fo’ a parley on neutral ground…an’ every waggin’ tongue said he was gonna ask for peace terms. Glory, glory.
Me and Jasper Bennitt—not Jasper Bennett, from the big plantation up at White Church, he up an’ got hisself shot at Antietem,
no, I’m talking about the third son from the Bennitt clan down in Noble Crick, the one whut got caught with his second cousin Cindy Lynette in the haystack at that winter dance ovah in Harperstown—anyway, me an’ Jasper, we was stationed at Charleston at the time the news come in. We got us a 72 hour leave. Prob’ly coulda made it six months, ouwah major was that drunk. Noble Crick not bein’ all that far from Busey, where Ah hail from, we decided we’d grab a train back down to Georgia togethah. Postmaster Reagan had put a lotta runaway contraband to work rebuildin’ the war damage an’ a surprisin’ number o’ the rail lines was runnin’ again. We hopped a freight an howah after we got ouwah papahs signed and we was well on ouwah way. We rolled inta Savannah by three in the aftahnoon and set out to find a wagon headin’ out the direction we needed t’go in.
We seen a whole power o’ contraband, o’course, workin’ on the lines alongside the train as we rolled on by. Now, leathers ain’t people, o’course, no matter what those crazy Yankee abolitioners wanna tell ya, but they’s some decent ‘uns anyways…my own Auntie Sussanah, fo’ example, she loved me like Ah was her own blood an’ me and my folks always treated her good. She was honest and gave a good day’s work. An’ Ah have knowed a lotta leathers like that…good an’ kind and willin’ and hard workin’.
Through a Mythos Darkly Page 17