The rumble of thunder shook far off lands, and lightning struck a silver scar across the sky, prompting Jehovah to suggest that they seek shelter.
“A simple storm, Jehovah—nothing to be afraid of,” Herbert replied. “Maybe it will wash some of the sin from these lands.”
“I agree that the world could use a good cleansing, Herbert,” Jehovah said, the distance they had put between them and the creature putting him a little more at ease. “I, on the other hand, cannot. Every time I get wet, I rot a little more…”
“Very well, Jehovah. We’ll find shelter; but not before we investigate that,” he said, pointing towards the first manmade structure they had seen in days.
Jehovah’s jaw would have dropped if Herbert hadn’t seen fit to add extra stitching there, and he wondered how they could have gotten so close to the thing without him having seen it. The structure itself wasn’t any more unusual than any of the others they had encountered, but its size suggested to Jehovah the existence of giants.
The immense black gate that stood before him was inlaid with skulls and teeth—the skulls human, the teeth unknown—and beyond it, on rolling hills, lay stone after stone after stone, all designating the rotting remains of individuals who once roamed the Earth. Disturbingly, many of the decidedly human-sized graves appeared to be empty.
Herbert and Jehovah entered the cemetery (Herbert bravely and Jehovah hesitantly), and their footsteps echoed in the empty graves they passed over.
For the first time, Jehovah noticed that Dr. West was carrying something, something that he had not seen previously, and he quietly cursed his current lack of focus.
“What is that you are carrying?” he asked.
“A gun,” West replied. “I made it.”
“Since when does Herbert West carry a gun?” Jehovah returned.
“Since we keep running into monsters that are still fucking alive,” West returned, more sharply than he meant to, and Jehovah could neither comment nor argue with that reply.
They had stepped over and around several open graves, but it was Herbert West who finally stopped and inspected one, actually climbing into the hole and inspecting the open casket.
“This is odd, Jehovah,” he said. “Come look.”
“I think I’ll pass,” Jehovah replied. “What is it?”
“The casket has been broken out of, not into, as I expected, which eliminates grave robbers from the equation,” Herbert said. “But look here, something looks to have worked its way into the casket from underground.”
He climbed out of the grave and hurried to the next open one, and the results were the same, but before he could inspect a third one, they were interrupted by one of the occupants that had loosed itself from the Earth.
The corpse looked to be on its last leg and was barely upright, but the thing that intrigued Herbert West was not the corpse, but its passenger. Upon closer inspection—which was possible because the corpse showed no interest in either of the living trespassers to its domain—there seemed to be some sort of insect that had mounted the thing’s skull like a helmet, and it wasn’t about to let go.
The insect—a form of wasp, Dr. West had decided—was a foot long or more and coloured black and yellow, but its weirdest feature wasn’t its abnormal size, but the fact that it was wingless and that its legs and mandibles were unusually large. The creature was not, after all, attached to the skull of the corpse, but had actually removed (most likely with those deadly jaws) the bone, and was burrowing into what was left of its brain matter, its legs digging into it until it had partially submerged itself into the skull.
Fascinating, Jehovah heard Herbert West mumble, then he mumbled, dumbass, as Herbert took the business end of the gun and proceeded to dislodge the wasp from the corpse. It didn’t go easily, and it actually took the brain with it as it fell to the ground. The corpse, without its pilot, sank like a stone.
The wasp, much to their shock, used its legs to burrow into the ground and out of sight, leaving a large hole surrounded by red clay.
“It’s a parasite, Jehovah. Fascinating, really. I’ll bet if we open up that brain, we’d find eggs, or maybe even larvae,” Herbert said, his eyes intense. “I need to find one of them; for study. I need to see how they are able to make the dead walk, and how that may affect my studies, my re-agent.”
“That doesn’t look like it will be a problem, Herbert,” Jehovah said, and it was his turn to be the observant one.
Herbert turned and looked towards the horizon, and saw that the dead did indeed walk this cemetery, and they walked en masse.
The wasp-driven corpses were almost comical to watch from this distance, as they lumbered about, running into grave stones and each other, which caused Herbert West to deduce that it was a purely motorized reanimation, with no mental function on the corpse’s part, and only instinctual preservation on the part of the parasitic wasp.
“If you remove the wasp, the reanimation stops almost immediately,” he said. “The wasps, if I’m correct in my thinking, use the corpses much like a flower uses a bee: The corpse moves about much faster and farther than the wasp ever could and spreads the species while incubating the eggs, and later, feeds the larvae.”
Several of the corpses were now within striking distance of Herbert’s gun, but instead of taking a shot, he again used it to strike the wasp from its perch; this time, though, he attempted to stun the creature instead of just dislodging it.
In doing so, he inadvertently learned that the stunned wasp was unable to keep control over its host, as the corpse fell, wasp and all.
Herbert bent down to remove the wasp, and once the task was complete, removed a bag that looked to be made of a very heavy material and dropped the insect into it. He then—and Jehovah had to look away during this—removed the brain, and proceeded to dig out the eggs, which also went into the bag.
“I can’t wait to study them,” Herbert said. “I think it’s time I set up another one of my temporary labs, don’t you, Jehovah?”
“I'm all for whatever gets me out of here,” Jehovah replied.
The rumble of thunder again drew Jehovah’s attention, but this time it was sustained, and seemed to be growing louder.
In the distance, beyond the hills of the graveyard, they could see a dust cloud had kicked up and seemed to be building. The cloud was a wall several miles wide and growing.
“Maybe you were right, Jehovah,” Herbert said. “Maybe we should find shelter. I suggest we return to the car and take our chances with that thing.”
The noise grew, and a look of concern fell over Herbert West’s face.
“That sounds like the rumble of combustion engines, but we haven’t seen a running vehicle in months,” he said, as he headed for higher ground and removed a pair of binoculars from his backpack.
Just in front of the dust cloud (which had grown to span the horizon), vehicles of all shapes and sizes, many in complete disrepair, formed an impenetrable line of doom. From the look of them, many were old-world police vehicles that had been painted flat black and sported green, flashing lights.
Herbert lowered the binoculars and looked over at Jehovah, who was in his usual state of panic.
“Our car is stuck in the mud, Jehovah, and I doubt that we could dislodge it and be gone before they arrive, so I suggest we try and hide before they—whoever they are—arrive,” he said, and raised the binoculars once more.
As the convoy of vehicles got closer, he could make out several that had been obscured by the dust cloud, and they brought a sense of dread to Herbert West that he had rarely felt during his explorations. A steam locomotive converted to run on tank tread, and hauling cattle cars, split through the line of vehicles, belching black smoke into the already toxic sky, and several big rigs hauling multiple animal containment trailers trailed behind the steel juggernaut.
Herbert paid close attention to the trailers, and they appeared to be packed with live captives, many whom pushed multi-shaped limbs through the grating, rea
ching for some unobtainable freedom.
“Herbert, they’re getting closer,” Jehovah said, and with that, Herbert began to scan the horizon for a safe place, but he found none.
“We may,” he said, with a look of concern on his face, “be forced to fight, Jehovah.”
“With what?” Jehovah returned. “We have one gun, and I’m betting you haven’t even tested it yet!”
The sound was now deafening, and the cloud was now consuming the graveyard and the stumbling corpses, which Herbert and Jehovah had all but forgotten.
Without another word, Herbert West sprinted across the graveyard, his backpack and various supplies obviously weighing him down. Jehovah bounded behind him—the more time he had spent in this body, the better it seemed to respond—and he overtook the doctor and headed for the car.
Once he got to the top of the hill, overlooking the road below, he stopped and turned to issue a warning to Herbert West, as the first of the vehicles had already arrived.
Several motorcycles and battered police cruisers had stopped, the riders getting off their bikes and removing their helmets. One of the riders looked human enough, until his eyes blossomed on the end of fleshy stalks like a terrestrial sea urchin.
“Herbert, they’re here!” Jehovah said, and turned to run, but he was stopped cold as he saw Herbert West raise his gun and take aim. The blast was heart-stopping, and Jehovah threw himself to the ground, the recoil throwing Herbert in the opposite direction.
From the sound of the screaming below, the shot had found its mark, and Jehovah inched his way toward the hilltop to see what damage it had caused.
Herbert West had a plan, it seemed, and the plan was in full effect, as he had not shot at the advancing army, but at the Inferno Golem that was still silently standing on that lonely stretch of road.
The shot found its mark, and the beast roared to life, its fire burning bright as if lit by the flames from Hell itself. A roar was released from the beast from some unknown orifice, and its piston-like legs shook the ground. It turned and attacked the first thing it encountered, which, unfortunately for the eye-stalked humanoid, meant that the Golem’s spike-tipped arm forced its way through its skull. It didn’t stop there, as it moved across the ground leaving deeply recessed prints with each step. One of the men from one of several of the now-parked cars pulled a gun and fired, and with each shot, the Golem’s Hellfire burned brighter and its fury intensified. It was continuing down the road, leaving the dead and dying behind it, and it only stopped when a box truck—painted the same flat black as the other vehicles—smashed into it at full speed.
The driver of the vehicle paid with his life—as he was thrown through the windshield and into the road beyond—as the truck came to a violent halt, which seemed to have little effect on the Golem.
Herbert West had regained himself and was lying on his stomach beside Jehovah watching the carnage below, when he noticed a symbol painted on the side of the truck, which quickly disappeared before he could make out the details, as it was ruptured from the inside by two large, spider-like creatures that looked more mechanical than not (although the tubes running from their bodies to their legs looked very much like organic arteries).
Once freed, the spiders attacked the Golem with a speed that it couldn’t match, and they slashed at it with blades that ran the length of their front legs. Each hit threw sparks that spread like wildfire, but the Golem had blades of its own and slashed back, rupturing several of the tubes, causing one of the spiders to lose use of several of its limbs.
Beyond the fray, several of the larger, slower vehicles had arrived, and more soldiers were joining the battle. While their vehicles seemed makeshift, their uniforms did not, with each of them wearing a black armored suit comprised of overlapping segments. A green band on their arms carried what Herbert West assumed was the same logo that adorned the truck: a pyramid capped with the Eye of Dagon, something he was all too familiar with.
Jehovah saw that the driver of one of the big rigs held the steering wheel tight with six sets of arms, and when it exited the vehicle, each of those twelve arms carried a weapon meant to do them harm.
Outnumbered badly, the Golem still fought, like a machine programmed to do so, but it was soon overpowered, and its fire was extinguished when the one remaining spider began incasing it in a web-like secretion released from its abdomen.
Once fully entombed, the spider and several of the soldiers began dragging it towards the closest big rig, and the rest of the soldiers turned their attention to Herbert West and Jehovah’s car, which was still buried in the soft ground.
“My things…” Herbert said softly.
“We’ll worry about the car later, Herbert. Right now, we need to figure out how to survive,” Jehovah said, sounding not at all confident in their chances.
Several soldiers had already started in their direction, so they got up and ran back into the cemetery as quickly and quietly as they could.
It was Jehovah who suggested that they bury themselves in one of several empty graves further towards the back, in the hopes that the soldiers would not search each and every one once they realized there was nothing to find.
So they ran, dodging wasp-carrying corpses as they went, and finding a suitable grave, they laid down, and did their best to cover their tracks.
A soldier—ten feet tall or more—was the first to enter the cemetery, and the first to encounter one of the walking corpses. He shouted something over his shoulder, then turned and proceeded to remove the corpse’s legs from under it, knocking it down and crushing its skull. The wasp that it contained tried to burrow underground, but it too was stomped and its carapace crushed.
The soldiers that entered the cemetery were more varied than the vehicles they drove, with some only vaguely human, and some not even remotely so. The twelve-armed driver opened fire on the advancing army of corpses and cut a path of destruction through them, while other soldiers went about their brutally efficient business of crushing skulls and killing bugs.
There was an obvious attempt at militaristic form and function when the soldiers first entered the cemetery, but it quickly degenerated into random acts of violence and chaos, which more than once cost the lives of soldiers caught in the crossfire.
A creature—its eyes like two blasted craters, its mouth held shut with rusty industrial staples—opened fire with a WWII issue flamethrower, and took out corpse and soldier alike.
Herbert West was doing his best to calm Jehovah, who was trying his best to give away their position, when he saw that one of the burrowing wasps was trying to relieve him of the back of his head, so Herbert used the butt of his gun to crush the insect against the inside of the coffin they shared.
By the sounds of the war above them, the fight was getting closer and closer to their position, and Herbert could only hope that the soldiers didn’t look down as they passed by their grave.
Several corpses had stumbled past them, and one was thrown back, a shotgun blast removing its midsection, the two halves falling into their grave, obscuring all but a little of Herbert West’s line of sight, but he saw enough to know that the soldiers were running over and past their grave, including several who were riding dirt bikes.
There was more shouting and more weapons fired, but it was the large blast that caught their attention more than any other noise, and the effect that it had on the soldiers was almost immediate, as they were all running at speed back towards the cemetery gate and their vehicles below.
After a few minutes of relative silence, Jehovah said, “What do you think happened? Why did they leave in such a hurry?”
“One could only hope that our friend, the Golem, has rekindled his fire, and is giving them hell once more,” Herbert replied.
The sky above their grave was darkening, and it took them a moment to realize that smoke from the fires was the cause, and under cover of that smoke, it was decided that they would try and make their escapes; by car if possible, by foot if necessary.
The smoke coming up from the valley was intense (as was the shouting and gunfire), and Herbert and Jehovah had little trouble reaching the top of the hill under complete and total cover.
Herbert was correct, of course, as the Inferno Golem had indeed released itself, and was again battling impossible odds. Several vehicles had been smashed and one of the trailers had been overturned, releasing the prisoners within, who were now joining the battle against their would-be captors, and were turning the tide in favor of the Golem.
Several of the creatures had no interest in revenge and were making their escapes, as Herbert witnessed several Cancer Demons and a solitary Night-gaunt disappear into the vast emptiness around them.
“Look, Herbert,” Jehovah said. “Our car! They dug out our car!”
“When I say go, make a run for it, Jehovah, and don’t stop for anything,” Herbert replied. “Just jump in the back and hold on tight.”
Just then, a black-haired creature—its head a vertically split mouth, its arms branching into two at the elbow—picked up one of the police cruisers and threw it into the massing army, scattering them like rats, and this was the first time Herbert saw what looked like someone in charge, someone barking orders to the men (who in the chaos of the moment, were doing their best not to listen).
The man in question stood in the bed of a truck, completely encased in a suit that looked to be a cross between a fire suit and a deep-sea diving suit, the features behind the helmet glass obscured from Herbert’s vantage point.
“Now!” Herbert shouted, and they ran for the car, neither of them looking at anything but their objective, for fear of seeing a soldier, a bullet or worse.
Re-Animated States of America Page 7
