by Tim Curran
The President recognized his advisors, of course. Here, in this final hour, they had returned to him.
At the top of the worm, was Maddie’s head. Like the others, her face was a rubber mask stretched out of proportion into a ghoulish visage that still lived, emoted, and breathed. Huge yellow eyes hot as neon rolled in their sockets, a distended slime-dripping worm licked her lips like a tongue, and a vast blubbery mouth spoke to him. “We are here to serve thee, oh Great and Powerful Oz… tell us what it is you command…”
So, the President told them about that most secret of secrets, the most highly-guarded weapons system in the country that President after President mothered over like an egg they never, ever wanted to hatch. It was called the Apex Ultimatum. It was the ultimate doomsday weapon that was so terrible no one dared even whisper its name. A linked system of experimental fusion weapons that were to be activated only if the country was overrun by invaders, held by the enemy in a death grip.
He only needed the codes to activate it.
But, of course, he knew them… the head of Gordon Parks whispered them to him because as the tribal chief of the NSA, he was the nation’s ears and he heard everything. There was nothing his people had not tapped into, even the most classified codes in the country.
One by one, the President of the United States entered the codes and just before he fed in the last one, he went live coast to coast via satellite feed.
Suspended before the camera by a great viscid, undulatory worm, licked by the corkscrewing umbilicals of thousands of others, a gurgling worm puppet, he had one last message for the country:
“I AM ALPHA AND OMEGA! I AM THE BEGINNING AND THE END! I… I… I AM THE MAKER AND UNMAKER! CREATOR AND DESTROYER! I AM OZ THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE! AND I WILL SCATTER YOUR FLESH UPON THE MOUNTAINS AND FILL THE VALLEYS WITH YOUR HEAPED CORPSES AND THEIR WORMS! IWILL DROWN THE WORLD IN BLOOD AND PURIFY ITS SMOLDERING BONES. NOW I AM BECOME DEATH THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS—”
And in went the final code.
And the sky turned to blood.
And the air became a yellow toxic haze.
And the sun became a burning red skull.
And the cities of men became graveyards blown by radioactive dust and a blazing, kiln-hot wind of crematory ash settled over them with an eternal darkness.
In the end, the worm conquered all.
The End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tim Curran lives in Michigan. He has been writing his trademark brand of vivid horror since the early 2000s. Tim’s numerous novels and novellas include Clownflesh, Dead Sea, Skin Medicine, Hive and Resurrection.
In his most recent release from Bloodshot Books, Tim brings us back to one of his most popular creations in Dead Sea Chronicles.
His short stories have appeared in such magazines as City Slab, Flesh & Blood, Book of Dark Wisdom, and Inhuman, and anthologies such as Shivers IV, High Seas Cthulhu, and Vile Things.
ALSO FROM BLOODSHOT BOOKS
Craw Falls, South Dakota has become a cage. The mother of all blizzards has locked it down. The roads are impassable. Nobody gets in. Nobody gets out.
With the freezing winds and blowing snow has come an apex race of predators. They hide in the shadows. They crawl from the drifts. They use the storm as camouflage to hunt their human prey.
By morning, the town will be a morgue. Unless one small group of survivors can destroy the monsters in their midst. Horrors beyond imagining.
CLOWNS
https://amzn.to/2WBDvqG
RETURN TO THE DEAD SEA
Come back to a mist-shrouded realm of horrors outside our own world…
Come back to a place where rotting hulks drift on brackish tides and the nightmares of wayward travelers come to hideous life…
Come back to a rancid ocean choked with a tangled maze of moldering vegetation and the decomposing carcasses of those who died screaming for rescue…
Come back to a world where predators soar through noxious clouds, aquatic leviathans lurk in the currents below and the souls of lost sailors suffer an infinite torment on their final voyages…
DEAD MEN MAY TELL NO TALES…
BUT THE DEAD SEA DOES.
http://bit.ly/DSChronicles
HALLOWEEN, 1988
A gang of twelve-year-old boys are trick-or-treating in London. Off in the distance, they hear the discordant chimes of an ice-cream truck. It seems strange to hear on a cold autumnal night, but their thoughts of maximizing their candy haul soon dismissed its incongruous melody… until they saw the rusting hulk idling in the shadows at the end of the street, its driver a faceless shadow.
That was the night he took one of them.
OCTOBER, 2016
Years later, Halloween is fast approaching and Tom Craven is still haunted by the events of that dark night, especially the fact that their friend was never found. Increasingly plagued by horrific visions, Tom returns to the place where it all began, only to discover he's not the only one who can feel it. His friends have already arrived and are preparing for a battle which could get them all killed.
The Ice Cream Man is back… and he’s come for the ones that got away.
https://amzn.to/2YihXkt
From a crater lake on an island off the coast of Bronze Age Estonia...
To a crippled Viking warrior's conquest of England ...
To the bloody temple of an Aztec god of death and resurrection...
Their presence has shaped our world. They are the Riders.
One month ago, an urban explorer was drawn to an abandoned asylum in the mountains of northern Massachusetts. There he discovered a large specimen jar, containing something organic, unnatural and possibly alive.
Now, he and a group of unsuspecting individuals have discovered one of history's most horrific secrets. Whether they want to or not, they are caught in the middle of a millennia-old war and the latest battle is about to begin.
http://amzn.to/1peMAjz
There’s a monster coming to the small town of Pikeburn. In half an hour, it will begin feeding on the citizens, but no one will call the authorities for help. They are the ones who sent it to Pikeburn. They are the ones who are broadcasting the massacre live to the world. Every year, Red Diamond unleashes a new creation in a different town as a display of savage terror that is part warning and part celebration. Only no one is celebrating in Pikeburn now. No one feels honored or patriotic. They feel like prey.
Local Sheriff Yan Corban refuses to succumb to the fear, paranoia, and violence that suddenly grips his town. Stepping forward to battle this year's lab-grown monster, Sheriff Corban must organize a defense against the impossible. His allies include an old art teacher, a shell-shocked mechanic, a hateful millionaire, a fearless sharpshooter, a local meth kingpin, and a monster groupie. Old grudges, distrust, and terror will be the monster's allies in a game of wits and savagery, ambushes and treachery. As the conflict escalates and the bodies pile up, it becomes clear this creature is unlike anything Red Diamond has unleashed before.
No mercy will be asked for or given in this battle of man vs monster. It’s time to run, hide, or fight. It’s time for Red Diamond.
http://bit.ly/DiamondUS
Psychiatrist Dr. Desmond Carter had always believed that his former patient, author Simon Ryan, was dead.
But, when a bloodstained manuscript penned by Ryan arrives at his office, Desmond begins to doubt everything he thought he had known—not just about the troubled author's past, but his own sanity. Desmond seeks the truth. Instead, he discovers the wellspring of madness.
In Pandemonium, the sequel to his acclaimed 2011 novella The Noctuary, Greg Chapman drags you deeper into the nightmarish reality of the Dark Muses—creatures forged from the very darkness in our own souls.
The words contained within will drive you mad… and damn you to Hell.
THE NOCTUARY: PANDEMONIUM
http://bit.ly/Pandem0nium
ON THE HORIZON FROM
BLOODSHOT BOOKS
&nbs
p; 2020-21*
Birthright – Christine Morgan
Cracker Jack – Asher Ellis
The Obese – Jarred Martin
Cluster – Renee Miller
Pound of Flesh – D. Alexander Ward
Crimson Springs – John Quick
Popsicle – Christa Wojciechowski
Schafer – Timothy G. Huguenin
Revival Road – Chris DiLeo
The Amazing Alligator Girl – Kristin Dearborn
Fairlight – Adrian Chamberlin
Ungeheuer – Scott A. Johnson
Teach Them How to Bleed – L.L. Soares
Blood Mother: A Novel of Terror – Pete Kahle
A Life Transparent (Monochrome #1) – Todd Keisling
The Liminal Man (Monochrome #2) – Todd Keisling
Nonentity (Monochrome #3) – Todd Keisling
The Abomination (The Riders Saga #2) – Pete Kahle
The Horsemen (The Riders Saga #3) – Pete Kahle
* And beyond
READ UNTIL YOU BLEED
