Shoggoth 2- Rise of the Elders

by Byron Craft

  “Not going to happen, Gideon,” he snapped back, resuming his aim.

  “I saw it happen in a James Bond movie. The propane tank exploded, taking everyone out!”

  Ironwood laughed, “I also saw the episode of MythBusters where they tested the validity of the movie scene. It turned out to be Hollywood bunk. Now watch this!” He fired several rounds into both tanks. The entire thirty round clip exhausted, both tanks bled profusely. There was no explosion; the propane fuel did not ignite.

  Propane vapors are liquefied petroleum gas that is 50% heavier than air at sea level. As a result, LPG will settle in low places. The floor slanted down, in the direction of the stasis chamber. Ironwood fetched a leather medical bag stowed behind the Willys’ rear seat and set it down on a fender. He undid the catch.

  Gideon asked, “What’s that?”

  “I picked up some blasting gel from a friend and brought it along,” he answered removing a small cardboard box.

  “Are we going to use it?”

  “No,” he said opening the box. “But we will need this.” Printed on the brightly colored carton were the words, “Fire Countdown Timer, Battery-Powered, (2 AA batteries included).” “Crap,” he added, “Time is short, I’ve got to install the batteries.”

  “Here,” offered Gideon, “let me do it.”

  Ironwood next removed a small static free bag from the satchel and broke the seal. Inside was a pencil-thin metal cartridge three-inches in length.

  “A blasting cap,” observed Gideon peering over his shoulder.

  “Yes,” Ironwood answered, “it is all the explosive we’ll need.”

  The professor held the detonator while Gideon carefully attached the two wires from it to the blasting cap. Ironwood nodded when the task was completed and placed the improvised pyrotechnical device gently into the downhill stream of gaseous propane.

  “How long can we set the timer?” anxious Gideon asked.

  “The maximum time is fifteen minutes.”

  “Set it for ten and drive like hell!”

  Pemba returned to the backseat of the Jeepster when the timer was triggered. Ironwood got behind the wheel and Gideon, foregoing the passenger side door, jumped over it, and onto his seat. Professor Ironwood slammed first gear and surprised everyone when the little Jeep’s tires squealed on the antechamber floor burning rubber.

  ***

  Congressman Neville Stream was in excruciating pain. He had managed to slow the flow of the blood some from his shoulder wound. “Put pressure on it,” he told himself holding a hankie against his injury, “read that somewhere,” talking out loud in a semiconscious state.

  The Congressman, one-time presidential candidate, gallant defender of the masses, hid behind the shoggoth-making machine. His forces had dwindled down to three, and they wouldn’t remain standing long. One of them managed to get off a single burst of rounds from his semi-automatic before he was decapitated. His big cone buddy had turned traitor and was now hunting for him. Stream had been toting a small 9mm, and he placed several slugs into the thing’s hide. It didn’t kill it, but it became cautious after that. “The bastard!” he raged, “the next time I’ll aim at its head, the eyes for sure.”

  Neville Stream shifted his position, sitting on the floor, concealed behind the machine, keeping a watchful presence. Something cold touched his outstretched hand. Liquid propane is extremely cold and can cause freeze burns upon contact with skin. He jerked his hand away; it stung like dry ice. There was a petroleum smell to it. “Oh my God it’s propane!” he shouted giving away his position. The silhouetted Elder Being glared down at him.

  Chapter 23

  - Desert Diamonds -

  There was a flash brighter than the noonday sun that preceded the explosion, a sudden gleam of pulsing colors, and a display of chromatics that Mr. and Mrs. Gideon Ward would describe, in the years that followed as, “the very bowels of earth screaming in terror.”

  The blast was on the heals of the tiny Jeep, and fortunately for its occupants, it escaped the destruction exiting the cave within the old miner’s shack at full speed. Ironwood brought the Jeepster to a skidding halt, but not far enough to dodge the upsurge and eventual deluge of sand and debris. The three tunnel adventurers sat in the opened convertible, staring at one another, covered from head to toe with dirt. Pemba had a chalky residue on the tip of her nose, and Gideon wiped it clean with a handkerchief.

  Gideon leaned against the Jeepster’s door. “Mission accomplished, thank God. I am not sure what my next move shall be,” he diverted his attention toward Pemba.

  “What do you mean, Gideon?” asked Ironwood more than glad that they had left their threat behind them, beneath the earth. The sun had set an hour earlier, and a magnificent scattering of stars punctuated the heavens. Reaching below the dashboard, he turned on the car's interior light.

  “The military truck, Professor, was all I had in the world,” he answered. With an entreating expression, he looked Pemba’s way again. “I’m flat broke.”

  “What about these,” offered Pemba opening her backpack and producing Gideon’s travel humidor.

  Gideon smiled at the generous offer. He knew that Pemba hated “the things.’ She hated all tobacco products, but it tugged at his heartstrings to know that she cared enough for him to soothe his troubled heart with the offering.

  “Thank you, Sweetheart, but I won’t be able to afford these either, might as well give them up.” He reached over the front seat and took hold of the humidor. The plastic box rattled. Gideon looked at Pemba, then at Ironwood and shrugged. Quizzical, trailed by suspicious expressions, mingled with his facial features as he opened the lid. The cigars were missing. In their place were “50 ring size” diamond engraving shanks, tools of the Great Race.

  Gideon craned his head back and laughed uproariously. Ironwood, appearing not to know what set his friend off, leaned in Gideon’s direction and spied the diamonds in the box. In turn, he was overcome with uncontrollable laughter. Pemba, both delighted and amused, was immediately caught up in the hilarity.

  “I picked a great day to give up smoking!” declared Gideon still laughing. “Darling,” he shouted, “will you marry me?”

  “Name the time and place,” Pemba hollered back with the biggest smile Gideon had ever seen on her face.

  Chapter 24

  - Joy Ride -

  Ironwood and Gideon sealed the last remaining entrance to the Great Race’s tunnels. They hadn’t fathomed the severity of their predicament and imminent danger to their escape until they recalled that the two tubes of blasting gel resided behind the Jeepster’s rear seat in the leather bag. If the explosive force had reached the tail end of the vehicle, it might have detonated the package vaporizing the three of them.

  The realization of the possible danger made them laugh even harder as Gideon planted the two charges along with the one remaining blasting cap and detonator in the late Victor Nash’s miner’s cave.

  “Now, clear off,” he said, waving them away and locking the sliding wooden gate behind him. He had set the timer with a sixty-second delay. The explosion literally blew “the doors off the place.” The cave’s ceiling fell in blocking all access with thousands of tons of rock.

  ***

  Ironwood smiled at the recollection as he drove out of Darwin. Gideon and Pemba had left for the UK. They were going to be married in Professor Hambling’s house in Norwood; the Professor was going to act as Best Man. It would be their second ceremony. Admiral Hawkins had married the two in Ironwood’s living room, and Ironwood was Best Man at that pairing.

  The Professor slowed his Jeepster to a stop in front of a chain-link fence. A closed gate blocked the way. A sign fastened to the gate read, “No Trespassing. Property of the U.S. Navy.” Within arm’s reach was a keyless entry pad mounted on a galvanized pole. He punched in his four-digit PIN code. The country had definitely returned to normal because he had been recalled to his lab at the NWC. On weekdays, this was the route he took to work. In
stead of driving around the Navy base to the main gate in Ridgecrest, “You got to drive fifty miles to go five,” he'd tell his lab assistants,” the Professor would cut his travel time in half going this way. The gate “clanked,” rolled to the right, and he entered the confines of the Naval Weapons Center.

  Thomas Ironwood liked his job at the Center, and the reunion became filled with even more enthusiasm when his friend Vice Admiral Jack Hawkins was off the hook. The news media had been full of the disappearance of Congressman Neville Stream. His vanishing became complete after several weeks of beating the story to death. All anyone knew was that the Congressman was last seen in his fancy limo heading into the desert. Land and air searches for the missing politician lasted close to a month when all hopes of finding him were given up. Editorials speculated, writing stories about his disappearance at the hands of organized crime, a disgruntled wife, political opponents, with one tabloid claiming alien abduction.

  Luck had been on the side of Ironwood, Gideon, and Pemba when the Propane-fueled explosion detonated. Due to the enclosed environment in the underground caverns, the release of the pent-up blast produced extreme pressure on the interior causing a sizable avalanche outside that buried the BMW limousine along with the excavation equipment parked next to “Dead Man’s Point.” The landslide eliminated all signs to the Congressman’s whereabouts. With no Congressman Stream to offer evidence against Admiral Hawkins, the Congressional Committee disbanded, and all thoughts of it became a faded memory.

  Memories of the collective consciousness would soon fade as well, Ironwood’s empirical knowledge of fifty sum years dictated. Oh sure, books will be written about the arrival of the Great Race and their shoggoth guards. Documentaries by the score produced, and Hollywood fictionalized reenactments of the invasion would soon grace the big screens, in DVD’s and, streaming into peoples’ homes. On the other hand, in a generation or two, the revisionists would have their heyday, and everything that was true would become wrong, conspiracy theories would abound, and the cast of characters turned topsy-turvy until it will be darn difficult to discern fact from fiction.

  Thomas Ironwood kept his car at a steady 35 miles per hour, enjoying the scenery. A projection? A power pole? Something unfamiliar to him caught his attention. He turned the Jeepster slightly to the left taking a different path. It was a way he had traveled over a year ago when Gwendolyn Gilhooley fell through the earth and first discovered the Great Race tunnel beneath the Mojave. An accident that eventually was the catalyst that altered world thinking forever. That tunnel had been sealed back then with a dynamite charge and a river of molten lava.

  Closer Ironwood noticed more of the poles, in a straight-line receding into the distance. Had the Seabees erected electric poles out this far? It didn’t seem possible to him, and besides, there were no power lines strung between them. Now only a hundred yards from the first in the row, he could make them out much better, and the realization of their true purpose became sudden and unsettling. The top of each soaring projection blossomed into a trumpet shape. Professor Ironwood was familiar with the ancient profile. He had observed it carved many times in the Great Race’s tunnel walls. It was a synthetic life form grown for a specific purpose. An organism programmed long ago to collect solar energy.

  By then the Professor had reduced the speed of his tiny auto below 15 miles per hour. He scanned the area searching for the place they exploded almost eighteen months earlier. There should be signs of strewn rock and hardened lava. Was his memory failing? It wasn’t where he had remembered it. Seconds later he saw what appeared to be the debris he was looking for, only pushed aside and piled in a different location. The hole in the ground was no longer plugged with molten rock. Volcanic emissions had been removed and shoved away. The hole in the tunnel ceiling, back then, was only four-feet square. Now he witnessed an opening a good thirty-feet across ramping down below. Below to what? A golden light radiated from the depths. Ironwood turned off the car’s engine, exited the vehicle, and cautiously approached the earthly cavity.

  The ramp was a perfectly formed piece of civil engineering. The slant was gradual. Somehow sunlight had penetrated the tunnel causing it to repair and grow, Ironwood decided. He wanted to run, get the hell out of there and notify base security, maybe even the Marines again. But there was a calling. Was it symbiotic or just his stubborn curiosity? The urge was too strong to resist. Slowly walking down, he felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck.

  Ironwood stepped onto a loading platform. He had seen a few of these in his past exploration of the tunnels. This one, however, was in perfect condition. Unlike the others, there was no rubble to mar its surface or appurtenances. It stood as it did probably fifty million years ago. The chrome pedestal laden with the shiny matching elliptical device mounted on top, fabricated to summon the shoggoth underground railroad, was pristine. A green light flashed on its surface. It was about then that he heard it arriving.

  "Eeeeeeee! Eeeeeeee! Wawk Wawk Wawk Wawk! Came the age-old cry. It was the time to run, but his feet were rooted to the Elder pavement. It was also the time to observe, all good scientists observed, if a shoggoth, especially a shoggoth conveyance, was supplied with its solar feed would it NOT feed on living things? The amoebic form slowed to a stop alongside the boarding ramp, the face of the giant protozoa matching the shape of the five-sided tunnel.

  Ironwood looked to his right and noticed that the tunnel stretched on, gradually disappearing from view. The shape of a door formed in the side of what was clearly an organic carriage. Several doors, identical, opened to the platform. Professor Thomas Ironwood chose the one closest. A golden seat formed around his torso when he entered, and the protoplasmic entry closed gently. The thing didn’t consume him; it embraced him. Ironwood felt comfortable. “What the hell,” he said as he leaned back and the shoggoth subway train left the station.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Byron Craft started out writing screenplays, moved on to authoring articles for several magazines and finally evolved his writing style into exciting, sci-fi, fantasy, horror novels.

  Craft has published three novels in a planned five-novel mythos series that reflects the influence of H.P Lovecraft. Byron Craft's first novel "The CRY of CTHULHU," initially released under the title "The Alchemist's Notebook," was the reincarnation and expansion of one of his most memorable screenplays. Craft demonstrates he is as capable a novelist as scriptwriter. Craft's second novel, “SHOGGOTH” continues with all the ingredients of a classic Lovecraft tale, with some imaginative additions. In “SHOGGOTH 2: RISE OF THE ELDERS” Craft continues to tie characters together on an adventure to save humankind from atrocities they are blissfully unaware.

  The Arkham Detective series, which includes “Cthulhu’s Minions,” “The Innsmouth Look,” “The Devil Came to Arkham,” and finally, “The Dunwich Dungeon,” are currently available individually and as a collection in both a Kindle format or softcover.

  Craft enjoys writing full-length stories and would love to get feedback from his readers. Please visit his website: www.ByronCraftBooks.com

  If you would like to read more books by Byron Craft, please visit his website: www.ByronCraftBooks.com or go to Amazon.com

  THE MYTHOS PROJECT SERIES

  The CRY of CTHULHU

  (Originally published under the title: The Alchemist’s Notebook.) This novelization of The Cry of Cthulhu film project is about a shell-shocked Vietnam vet, and his wife. They inherit an old country estate in Germany around the time his company transfers him to the same area. The two soon discover that the coincidence is really too good to be true.

  Their home rests near a timeworn door into the earth that is poised to open, exposing all to a horde of four-dimensional beings. Soon the line between our reality and that other space-time will be blurred forever, leaving mankind to be consumed by shrill, shrieking terror. Only one man has the slimmest chance to save our planet and, even though he has no place to hide, he prefers to run. [Book One]

  S
HOGGOTH

  An accepted theory exists that millions of years ago a celestial catastrophic occurrence wiped out every living thing on the planet. This theory may be flawed. Fast-forward to the 21st century. A handful of scientists, allied with the military, discover a massive network of tunnels beneath the Mojave Desert. Below, lies an ancient survivor, waiting...and it's hungry! [Book Two]

  SHOGGOTH 2: RISE OF THE ELDERS

  Who creates and controls the shoggoths? For Professor Thomas Ironwood and his heavily armed team, the answer is crucial. The fate of the free world hangs in the balance.

  The solution? Return to the tunnels beneath the Mojave Desert, locate a gigantic subterranean vault and unlock the secrets it contains. Deadly primal secrets that lie in wait from a time before human life began!

  Byron Craft once again takes us below the earth in this SHOGGOTH sequel enveloping us with tentacles, claws, and mucus glop. A talented fusion of Lovecraftian sci-fi, mystery, fantasy, and horror with a 21st-century twist. [Book Three]

  THE ARKHAM DETECTIVE SERIES

  Cthulhu’s Minions

  A novelette introducing the Arkham Detective. Cthulhu’s Minions are Pilot Demons. Nasty pint-sized legless creatures that crawl on their hands with razor sharp claws and fangs. The diminutive beings must be stopped before they conduct one of Cthulhu's Old Ones to the back alleys and streets of Arkham, likewise the entire planet. The story takes place during the Great Depression, a spot in time where H. P. Lovecraft and Raymond Chandler could have collaborated. Henceforth the narrative begins, through the eyes of an Arkham Detective. [Book One]

  The Innsmouth Look

  The second story in the series that brings the detective back, investigating a murder and the kidnapping of a small child, which leads to Innsmouth by the sea, the frightful creatures that lurk there, and what they plan to call up from the depths. [Book Two]