Shoggoth 2- Rise of the Elders

by Byron Craft

  In her house trailer, Mavis plied the stranger with a ham sandwich and Snapple laced with Canadian Club. His tongue soon loosened up. One of Mavis Blister’s hobbies and recreations can be summed up in one word, “gossip.” She would normally take an exaggerated view of things with an unerring aim at jumping to conclusions. However, this time the old desert dweller was spot on. Ironwood, Gideon, and Pemba arrived a few minutes after she had phoned. Their combined weight inside the past its time travel trailer made the floor feel spongy underfoot. Ironwood made a mental note to hire a handyman he knew, to shore up the underside of her little home. It was the least he could do for her, seeing all she had gone through and had done to aid their investigations.

  Mrs. Blister promptly filled them in on the “young man’s particulars” the moment all of them filed in through her side entrance. “He’s one of them secret military decoders that after three tall glasses of my special Snapple tonic has been spillin’ the beans. Say’s that there’ll be more of them shoggoth comin’ unless we stop his boss.”

  Ironwood, although feeling uneasy from her telling, couldn’t help being amused either. Knowing Mrs. Blister well, he was certain that she had given the stranger the third degree. Ironwood smiled, she probably invented the questions on passport applications. “Who are you?” he asked the stranger. His face had been severely sunburned, second and third-degree burns. Mavis had applied a homemade salve to the pealing skin. It smelled like motor oil.

  “Morris Ankrum," he answered slurring his name, "cryptographer for the NWC, or at least I was. Probably be shot at dawn now.”

  “What is this you told Mrs. Blister about more shoggoths?”

  “It’s true,” he gulped, “He’s got the translation, the directions to run the machine that makes them.”

  “Makes shoggoths?” the guy must be delusional Ironwood thought.

  “Yes,” he managed to blurt out. “Some . . . place, I don’t know where . . . underground is all I know.”

  “Who?”

  “Congressman Stream.”

  ***

  “Just when I thought that everything was returning to normal our megalomaniac has to run amok again,” announced Ironwood situated on a hill. He stood with Gideon and Pemba upon a knoll a few miles from what the kids called “Dead Man’s Point.” Gideon was scanning the horizon through a pair of binoculars. The last they had heard of Neville Stream was his campaign tour through the country promising rescue and change to the multitude. He speeches before crowds of thousands, motivated by his phony crusade to liberate the population from the alien threat and to apprehend “those” responsible for the invasion went south when the Elder Beings returned to Yith, and all the shoggoths were obliterated. After that, the Congressman disappeared from the limelight.

  The three of them had already spied solitary digging by a large track hoe at the sight of the cave-in where they had narrowly escaped a shoggoth warrior. From what they could tell it appeared that most of the debris had been excavated and the old tunnel opening uncovered. Parked nearby stood a delivery truck with a cargo box resting on the back. The double doors to the small semi-trailer were wide open. The interior was bare.

  “Look!” shouted Gideon. “There’s a vehicle out there going like a bat outta hell!”

  At first what they took to be a dust devil, developed before their eyes, into a long black car racing across the plain raising a desert dust rooster tail.

  “What is that?” asked Pemba.

  Gideon squinted against the afternoon sun through the binoculars and nodded in recognition, “It's a turbocharged V12 Porsche limo, four-wheel drive. Damn thing's got to be worth over two-hundred grand! Read about one of these last year, Vladimir Putin is supposed to have one.”

  “I am sure it is not the Russian Premier,” Ironwood added.

  “It’s got to be our man. What do you say, Prof?”

  “Lock and load.”

  ***

  They followed the paper trail and came to the hollowed-out amphitheater pyramid. They didn’t waste time to inspect the structure’s interior, like before, and motored on to the antechamber that housed the gigantic shiny five-sided door. When they came upon its interior Ironwood turned his little car around pointing to where they just came, applied the parking brake, and exited the vehicle, leaving the engine running. He wasn’t concerned about the auto’s carbon monoxide overcoming them. The chamber was high-ceilinged with more than ample space to contain the toxic fumes and the air in the tunnels, they had left behind, were probably still breathable due to the dissipating breeze generated by the speeding car. He was more concerned to have his Jeepster running in the event of a quick getaway.

  Gideon and Pemba exited the vehicle close behind the Professor. The restored mammoth door, thirty feet on either side, stood as a barrier to intercept the crazed Congressman. The tall man with a scar jumped into the driver seat of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. He started the engine, backed the JLTV up a few feet, turned the wheel shifting to a forward gear, and maneuvered it to the position facing the great door.

  “You’re not going to try and ram the truck through are you, Gideon?” shouted Ironwood.

  “Not on your life, Prof,” he hollered back through the driver’s side window. Gideon motioned to Pemba with a smile and bid her to, “Open the door, Sweetheart!”

  Pemba with an all-knowing nod walked up to the multicolored control panel.

  “That hasn’t worked since the last time we opened it,” challenged the Professor.

  “I’ve given it a lot of thought since then. It wasn’t that the combination was only good for one shot. Nor were you entering the arrangement incorrectly. These Elder guys did more than just the physical touching of buttons; I’ll bet you a dollar to donuts that they used thought patterns as well. Hit it, Sweetheart!”

  The thought had never occurred to Ironwood. Pemba’s empathic abilities, in conjunction with the combination sequence, were more than likely what caused the door to open back then. At that moment he knew, deep down inside, that Gideon and Pemba had discovered the key to unlocking the door.

  “R-O-Y-G-B,” Pemba enunciated clearly, her voice raised coinciding with every push of the soft, fist-sized, control buttons.

  An iris appeared at the five-sided door’s center expanding rapidly. Once again, the chamber filled with the unearthly chorus and the barrier opened. “There's that music again," cited Gideon speaking louder, “It seems to come from nowhere and yet from everywhere . . .” He shifted the JLTV into first, drove it halfway in and parked it over the threshold. Gideon turned off the engine and exited the cab. “One helluva doorstop!” he proclaimed. “It’s not going to trap us inside this time.”

  Ironwood was temporarily overwhelmed by his companions’ ingenuity. He had raced there without giving much thought to how they were going to enter the stasis chamber, let alone exit trouble free. He had brought some dynamite gel and two detonation timers, he had obtained from Gwendolyn Gilhooley, with the hopes of blasting through a sidewall. An idea fraught with desperation, he had to admit. He was glad that Gideon and Pemba were two steps ahead of him.

  Pemba trotted over to the JLTV and entered on the passenger side. In a few seconds, she emerged shouldering her backpack.

  “Are you ready?” Ironwood asked.

  “I am ready, Professor,” she replied, fastening the Velcro belt strap.

  ***

  An eerie silence greeted them beyond the opening. Ironwood experienced a haunting feeling when he spied the empty stasis tubes hanging from the ceiling. For him, it was an alien ghost town. No longer did the cone-shaped race slither and glide about their lofty chamber. Only a faint memorial to them existed in the form of their trails left in the dust-laden floor.

  Ironwood and his compatriots were distracted by a metal clanking and, once again, the alien composition. Deep within the interior flashlight beams swayed.

  “It must be him,” whispered Gideon, “and there is more than one of them.”

  Their
weaponry was limited. Ironwood had his revolver holstered at his side, and Gideon carried their only M16 with a single loaded clip. The fuel for the discarded flamethrowers that they had left behind, was spent. They had hoped that the element of surprise would enable them to apprehend the mad congressman before he could work his insane plan. Quietly advancing, they could see that they were severely outnumbered.

  Pemba silently left their side and disappeared into the darkness. Gideon, panicked by her leaving, called after Pemba over and over in a harsh whisper. Moments later she reappeared securing the flap on her backpack. Gideon attempted to ask where she had gone but halted when Pemba held a finger to her lips. Ironwood shook Gideon’s shoulder signaling that the moment at hand was far more pressing. The three of them focused their attention on the unavoidable.

  A dozen men in black turned and pointed semiautomatic rifles at Ironwood, Gideon, and Pemba. Their optimism vanished in an instant.

  There was an attempt at levity in Neville Stream's voice. “Wisdom flowers in the righteous, except in the case of you three,” followed by bizarre laughter. “Look what lurks down here,” Stream added, outwardly elated by their presence. “And to think that I thought this would be an afternoon of drudgery. Today is my lucky day! I am so happy you could make it.”

  “Put your guns down on the pavement,” a large ponytailed man ordered, “slowly!”

  Ironwood unholstered his .38 clasping the grip between his thumb and index finger, lowering it to the chamber floor. Gideon turned the barrel of the M16 toward himself and set it down.

  Pemba was wide-eyed with terror scrutinizing a dark form behind their captors. It was obvious to Ironwood that she had sensed something that they had not. Ironwood and Gideon followed her gaze. One of the black-clad men directed the beam of his flashlight over his shoulder while affecting a villainous smile. An Elder Being stood in the light. Surprised by the sight, the three stepped back.

  “Don’t move!” ordered ponytail.

  “He’s harmless,” offered the Congressman in a condescending tone. “He’s my pet now, restrained like a disobedient dog.”

  The cone giant was wrapped several times in multiple links of heavy chain. One end secured to the shoggoth-making machine, its alien visage resolved to its bondage. Scorched flesh was visible; numerous burn marks peppered its massive body. The enormous three-eyed head, no longer held high, sagged in defeat to its rugose frame.

  “You put the kibosh on my plans a year ago,” announced Stream anger overtaking his features. “And somehow you managed to make all its brothers vamoose. How you did it, I haven’t figured out yet, but it doesn’t matter. Because this little fellow missed his clarion call,” pointing over his shoulder. “I had sequestered the thing in my very special place where your monkeying couldn’t reach it. And now it does what I tell it to,” he added sarcastically.

  “For what purpose this time, Neville?” challenged Ironwood.

  “Why to make a bunch more shoggoths, you asinine fool! Through persuasive measures I got my pet to reveal the workings of their creation device. During our interrogation, it also gave us the means to produce the perfect shoggoth warrior. One that grows and repairs itself at an alarming rate and is ten times as vicious, rendering them far more difficult to eliminate. A true menace to society that my campaign will promise to vanquish, rescuing the skulls full of mush electorate.”

  “Only an insane man would dream up such a deadly conspiracy,” braved Ironwood knowing that his time on Earth was running short, hoping to enrage Stream, maybe cause him to slip up, giving the three of them an opportunity. What that opportunity would be he had no idea. He was desperate. “More people will die so you can achieve power!”

  “Power? Naturally! That’s why the office boy wants to be the boss, why the private wants to be the general.”

  “The truth will come out,” countered Pemba, interjecting herself into the senseless dialogue. “The people will stop you.”

  “Truth?” he answered with a smirk. “You said that to my face once before my little darkie, and it is once too often. I will explain it to you so even you can understand.”

  Pemba beheld Neville Stream with glaring hatred; his racial slur ignited a fire within her, Ironwood had never seen her so angry.

  “No one fathoms truth in today’s media. Maybe it is the meaning or meaninglessness of life that drives them to despair. It all means very little to me when it comes to running this country. There are huge benefits in spreading and arousing negative emotions and fear to gain attention, keeping the insecure off-balance. It’s all just talking points. A select number of Washington insiders were willing to concede to my plans. They were directed through the back channels of my project and motivated by covert appropriations. K Street is loaded with people like that; the rest are ne’er-do-wells.”

  “Let’s settle this like men!” Gideon defied, throwing down the gauntlet.

  “Ha!” he guffawed. “You must be the Neanderthal. Why on Earth would I stoop to your level when I have a dozen guns pointed at your belly.” Visible anger trembled his countenance. “I have something special in store for the three of you. I’d rather not have you shot, but I will if you provoke me any further. We are going to make our first ‘new and improved’ shoggoth now, and my alien pet is going to direct it at you folks. I have trained it well. But don’t worry, once it is fully formed I’ll give you a head start. I am, after all, a sporting man.”

  Ponytail laughed, then receiving a nod from Stream pushed one lever on the dark machine forward while pulling another back.

  The alien music permeated the chamber again rising to a high volume crescendo. However, Ironwood noticed a slight variation in the tempo. Was it the results of Stream’s modifications to the device or was it something else? He turned and looked at the two people who over the months had become his closest friends. Earlier Gideon had felt responsible for the release of the alien hordes, but the guilt weighed heavily on the middle-aged Professor with the knowledge that he had brought them all to this moment and in due course to their deaths.

  It was easy for Thomas Ironwood to read Gideon’s body language. His eyes darted back and forth searching for the means to get the upper hand. The trained soldier needed a way to outflank his opponents. Much longer, Ironwood assumed, and the Afghan vet would dismiss all caution and charge into the fray. Now the term "Deep State" became a colloquialism for Ironwood when referencing Neville Stream and he wished that the Congressman would become entombed in the one he currently occupied.

  Pemba, on the other hand, was preoccupied, distracted, not looking at Ironwood or, in the dire moment, her lover. The fire in her eyes hadn’t diminished. Rather she was staring at the chained Elder Being. The creature of the once dominant race lifted its chinless head from its torso and regarded the young African woman with its three red eyes. The bygone days of its hostility to human existence seemed absent. Was there an understanding between them?

  The ancient Elder device gurgled and effervesced scarcely audible above the foreign chorus. A mass congealed and an array of mouths, fangs, and razor-sharp sword appendages extruded from a bubbling shape.

  The fettered Elder Being straightened its conical body and expanded its girth rising several inches in additional height. The chain snapped in one place followed by another and another. Links of chain became airborne raining down on Neville Stream’s army. The ponytailed man still working the crystalline controls of the alien mechanism was stopped short when an enormous lobster’s claw severed his left hand from his wrist. The big man screamed like a frightened child. His wrist gushed a red fountain as he kept screaming staring in disbelief at the gore. The neatly manicured hand fell to the floor, a diamond chip twinkled in the dim light.

  Gideon seized upon the opportunity the bloodletting offered and scooped up his M16. Ironwood retrieved his revolver off the floor as well, but neither took any action when they witnessed what transpired. The shoggoth warrior, fully formed, turned from them and attacked the men in black.
Eeeeeeee! Wawk! Tekeli-li! Eeeeeeee! Wawk! Tekeli-li! the translucent, greasy amoeboid cried, drowning out the alien choir while filleting the flesh of Stream's army. It truly was an advanced form of a shoggoth. It moved like greased lightning; none of the men having a chance to fire their weapons.

  With automaton-like movements Pemba reached toward her backpack, perhaps to open it and remove her camera, thought Ironwood. He turned to Gideon and started to command a retreat when he was suddenly distracted by the sound of a gun discharging.

  A small hole in Neville Stream’s left shoulder poured a great rivulet of blood. He fell backward, speechless, probably for the first time in his life. Pemba stood in a defensive posture with a two-handed grip on the SIG Sauer semi-automatic pistol Sergeant Jones had given her. A feather of blue-white smoke curled from the barrel. She stared emotionless at the spot where the Congressman fell. To Ironwood, Pemba appeared to be in a trance. If they could escape and reach the safety of their home would she ever be able to recall the incident?

  Burdened by the desire for escape, Ironwood abandoned his deliberation, instead abandoning the space where they all stood. He grabbed the shooter by the arm and likewise with Gideon when he noticed him frozen in shocked surprise by the action of the pistol-packing Pemba. “Time to leave kids,” he bellowed.

  The way out remained open. The great iris dilation contracted encountering the JLTV obstacle, then reversed course opening. Open, close, open, close, over and over it continued approximating a blocked elevator door. During one of the doorway expansions, the trio of Ironwood, Gideon, and Pemba charged through.

  Pemba was recovering from her trance-like state and Gideon encircled her with loving arms. The Professor was in no mood for sentiment. He tapped Gideon on the shoulder, and when he turned from their embrace Ironwood demanded, “Gideon, give me your rifle.” Gideon handed the M16 over, and Ironwood aimed at the propane tanks located on the truck’s companion trailer.

  “Stop!” yelled the Afghan vet. “You’ll blow the place up. Incinerate us all like a bunch of Shoggoths.”