Gateway Through Time

by David Kernot

  "Is that better?"

  "Yes, except for the wind at my end."

  "We're at Mawson Station. Where are you?"

  "We're at Silbury Hill, and it's about to rain… Has the virus reached you?"

  "Yes," said Emerson. "We may have brought it with us. Do we know what it is?"

  "MOD said they're not sure, but they think it's a variant of a single-celled protozoan parasite."

  "Why would they genetically change it?"

  "To contort and elongate the joints. As the parasite burrows into the victim's brain, it weakens their willpower. It's transmitted through saliva, blood or urine."

  "How long does it take?"

  "Hours. It's mutating, continuously strengthening. There is a cluster of Shoggoths in London. They have been spreading it everywhere."

  "How long until anyone finds a cure?"

  Andrew turned his back to the rain gusts. "Days… weeks... I don't know. What's it like out there?" He watched a rainbow shimmer between the top of Silbury Hill mound and the Kennet Long Barrow.

  "It's cold. There's some unearthly vortex reaching far into the sky. Any more reports on the Pleiades Star Cluster?"

  Andrew paused as the rainbow darkened and the air around Silbury Hill shimmered. "MOD suggested that it's growing brighter every few hours. In the Hubble images, you can see a trail from the South Pole out to the Seven Sisters."

  "Damn it!"

  Giselle joined him. She placed her hand on his arm and tugged. "My Lord."

  He nodded to her. A village shimmered in and out of view at the base of Silbury Hill. Bizarre. "You take care down there, Emerson. I'm not sure how we'll go. Something weird going on here. It's been a pleasure."

  "Likewise, sir. It was good to have that beer. I'll see you on the other side."

  "Ha ha!" Andrew ended the call and returned his phone to his pocket.

  "It's the old roman village of Silbury. I visited as a child," she said.

  The village view firmed. A horn sounded. Intense and sorrowful.

  He shuddered.

  A serpentine dragon, with a human snake-like head and body but with wings appeared. It had grey hair and a long beard. Part dragon, part man then. Its eyes were blood red.

  Giselle stepped behind him. "Is that one of Norden's siblings?"

  "The ancient Celtic god? I don't know."

  Knights in armor and tentacled heads lined up either side of it.

  One from each side screamed in unison and ran toward them.

  The Knight Commander joined them, sword held high, and Giselle ran to the car.

  Andrew raised the sword Caliburn, and the air thrummed with magic. The hair on his arms tingled.

  As one, he and the Knight Commander strode forward and met the first monster. They cut him in two and faced the other. He danced the elaborate yet familiar steps of a Master Swordsman; the sword slashing left and right. Magic from its hilt held his grip tight and blade point true.

  The Knight Commander fell away to attend to another of the monsters. Andrew focused on chopping away each tentacle, waiting for a time when he could thrust Caliburn into the monster's heart—if the creature had one. Once upon a time these giant tentacled monsters were only strange nightmares.

  He wiped his face, wet with blood. Now they would be his final thoughts. He slashed at the creature while the sword pulsed, alive with its own heartbeat. When one creature fell, another replaced it and he tired. Exhaustion set in.

  Even though the sword moved under its own volition, parrying, twisting, turning, finding her way through each opponent's weaknesses before finding flesh and biting deep, unbidden, and unforgiving, he grew weary. They were two against an army tenfold.

  The ground continued to shake as the creatures multiplied. The serpentine man-dragon pushed aside his army and stood proudly in front.

  The Knight Commander joined him, equally exhausted. He looked up and shook his head. He had nothing left. Panting, he struggled to raise Caliburn. Her magic was potent, but Andrew was drained.

  Giselle joined them, but her short-sword would not help. Instead, she lifted a strange-looking machine gun, matt-grey and half the size of this beautiful woman that had turned his life around. She pointed it at the man-dragon.

  "Really?"

  She raised the enormous gun higher and stared through the sights. "The government thought I should know how to handle a modern weapon—just in case." She fired.

  The mighty god-like man-dragon's head exploded, and it fell among its minions. The Cthulhu knights fell back. Waiting. She laughed. "Special rounds. They said they were RDX."

  "General Cobb?"

  "Before they left for the Antarctic. He had it sent over."

  Andrew wanted to laugh and cry. He had underestimated her, not given her enough credit.

  A horn blew. Another of the half-man, half snake serpentine dragons appeared. He struggled to lift the sword.

  Giselle fired again, and the creature's head exploded. It died like the previous one.

  A horn blew again, longer this time. Louder.

  Four serpentine dragon-man creatures appeared. They stood, as if they were waiting for him to respond. It was clear they didn't hold life to the same value as humankind did.

  Giselle fired four rounds at the creatures, and they exploded. More knights joined them.

  A horn sounded for the longest time and eight of the creatures replaced the four.

  Andrew closed his eyes. He sighed. Hopeless. There wouldn't be enough rounds in Giselle's gun. "Knight Commander, I think it's only a matter of time."

  The man bowed his head in assent. "Agreed. They seem to have an endless supply of gods and creatures."

  Andrew ran his bloodied fingers through his hair, rubbed an itch at the back of his neck. An idea, perhaps? "We must leave this world forever. Will you join us, Commander?"

  The Knight Commander shook his head. "I will stay."

  Andrew's jaw tightened. He nodded.

  The man bowed. "We serve you, Lord."

  Andrew bowed back. He glanced at Giselle. "Come on then, my love. Step close and put your arms around my neck. Don't let go until I say and hold that sword and gun of yours tight. We may need them yet."

  She stepped close, and he understood. "Yes, my Lord. Where are we going?"

  "A gateway through time. Back home," he said. "Back to Camelot."

  Andrew removed the device from his multi-cam pocket. He lined up his fingers into the notches as best as he could and twisted it. The surrounding air shifted and Silbury Hill vanished along with the carpark and surrounds.

  All he had to do was find Camelot, but the magic in Caliburn and his deep connection with Arthur Pendragon would help.

  ◆◆◆

  Chapter IX

  Mawson Station, Antarctica.

  Sergeant Emerson James Ash clambered from the Australian C130H aircraft in the middle of the Antarctica wilderness. He struggled to zip up his thermal jacket and keep out the biting wind. It seemed almost an impossible task with his thermal gloves on, but he knew better than to remove them. His fingers throbbed from the cold. This mission did not differ from any other, and after Amye had died, he volunteered for the more risky ones. This was another dangerous mission, and snow pelted him and reduced his visibility through the thick goggles. He rubbed at the lenses to get a better view and wondered how the pilot had seen the small icy runway, never mind be able to land on it. General Cobb joined him. Denna, too. Newly promoted, she seemed distant after returning from the device. He couldn't blame her.

  He ran his hand down the side of his thigh, to the military pouch that housed the weapon. A time traveling machine, a device not from this world, and yet Andrew Stone had mentioned at one point it had the same carbon nanotube coating existed in a 17th century Damascus sword. Impossible and yet true.

  Shapes appeared out of the white blizzard, two creatures no longer looking human with their glazed eyes, their heads tilted to the side, and their contorted joints elongated. They launched
themselves at a soldier not far away. Emerson cocked his weapon and pointed the semi-automatic Steyr at them. He fired from the hip, and the white blizzard wall turned crimson. The once-human creatures shook and shuddered. They fell to the ground in a pool of their own blood. Only after Emerson emptied the rounds in his magazine did he release his hold on the trigger. He changed the magazine with a full clip.

  The General ran over to the attacked soldier. "He's dying, Ash."

  "General Cobb," said Emerson, "don't touch him, don't touch any of them."

  But the general ignored Emerson and tried to stem the man's bleeding. "It's Bryce, my aide."

  Emerson closed his eyes. He shook his head. On the flight down, he and Bryce had told stories about their lives in Australia's capital city, Canberra. A time before the apocalypse, before the Shoggoths had appeared en masse and destroyed half the town.

  The general stood, his shoulders sagged, and he wiped the blood off his hands onto his uniform coat. "He's gone!"

  One of the ground crew ran forward with a flamethrower. "Stand back, sir," he said, and torched the two bodies where they lay. The man turned the flames on the fallen soldier, Bryce.

  Vampires. Zombies. Emerson wanted to shout out. Not that, but something else. This disease ended in a deadly sleeping sickness, something unheard of before.

  He wondered how he arrived at this point in his life. All he had ever hoped for was to see Amye, retire and spend his days with her, but she had gone, killed at the hands of the Chthonian and the terrorist, Shudde-M'ell. He couldn't let it go. That was why he was here.

  He pulled a sat phone from one of his camouflaged trouser pockets and dialed a number.

  "Colonel Andrew Stone," said a voice at the other end.

  "Sir. We're too late," said Emerson. "They've reached the South Pole."

  "Emerson, is that you? You're breaking—"

  Emerson frowned. "Where are you?"

  "Hello—rus?"

  Emerson walked up a small embankment. "Is that better?"

  "Yes, except for the wind."

  Emerson smiled. "We’re at Mawson Station. Where are you?"

  "We’re at Silbury Hill, and it’s about to rain … Has the virus reached you?"

  "Yes," said Emerson. "We may have brought it with us. Do we know what it is?"

  "MOD said they're not sure, but they think it's a variant of a single-celled protozoan parasite."

  "Why would they genetically change it?" Emerson frowned.

  "To contort and elongate the joints. As the parasite burrows into the victim's brain, it weakens their willpower. It's transmitted through saliva, blood or urine."

  Emerson stared over at General Cobb and cringed at the General's bloodstained hands. The man was hugging the dead soldier. "How long does it take?"

  "Hours. It's mutating, continuously strengthening. There is a cluster of Shoggoths in London. They have been spreading it everywhere."

  The wind picked up sending swirls of snow his way. It howled. Emerson yelled into the mouthpiece. "How long until anyone finds a cure?"

  "Days… weeks... I don't know. What’s it like out there?"

  Emerson stared into the distance at the muted dilation lights, to a bizarre space-time portal in the Southern Antarctic Region. He couldn't fathom how it existed. "It’s cold. There’s some sort of unearthly vortex reaching far into the sky. Any more reports on the Pleiades Star Cluster?"

  "MOD suggested that it’s growing brighter every few hours. In the Hubble images, you can see a trail from the South Pole out to the Seven Sisters."

  "Damn it!"

  "You take care down there, Emerson. I'm not sure how we'll go. Something weird going on here. It's been a pleasure."

  "Likewise, sir. It was good to have that beer. I'll see you on the other side."

  Emerson ended the call, but not before Colonel Andrew Stone had laughed. Emerson faced General Cobb. "General, I think we've got it wrong. I think the virus started here with the Shoggoths."

  "You think the Shoggoths are here?"

  "That and more, sir. This is their home, where they were created."

  General Cobb nodded. "I wondered."

  "And sir, you need to change your coat and wash your hands immediately."

  Cobb frowned. "The virus?"

  Emerson shook his head rather than say they had marked the man for death. "Just—" Bursts of semi-automatic rifle fire interrupted him. Again and again. Emerson closed his eyes. This shouldn't be happening, not here. Mawson Station was one of the most remote and desolate places on the Earth. He faced General Cobb again. "Sorry, General, I just think you need to clean off any blood or fluids. A precaution. I'm sure it's fine." Emerson imagined the highly contagious virus would make its way into the general's bloodstream, twisting his DNA with the Old One's magic.

  Emerson rubbed away the misty film from his ballistic eyewear and marched slowly in single file with the remaining team, rifles ready to fire. On the way to the Station, Emerson counted three more bodies, men from the Antarctic Research Station at Mawson. They treated each one the same way as Bryce—with fire—it seemed the only way to contain it.

  ◆◆◆

  Emerson clambered into Mawson Station. He couldn't remember ever being as cold as he was now. His toes and the end of his fingers were numb, his chest tight, and Emerson breathed in and out with a slow rhythm to stop the bite of the freezing air. Lucky, he learned at Force Prep before they came down that this was the mild weather season, early in the year, instead of the middle of winter. He stomped on the ground and forced blood into his almost frozen feet and hoped for some respite, pleased for the research station's heating.

  He wasn't ready for the scene that presented before him. Blood covered the walls in broad sprays. Bodies strewn in twisted death over chairs and furniture told their own story about the awful fight they had endured before death. A solitary, blood-covered pistol lay on the floor.

  In the next room side, the scene was no different, except much colder because of the giant hole that shattered the ceiling. Snow piled up in the middle of the floor, and several Shoggoths lay near a man, presumably a research scientist in a white lab coat stained crimson.

  The lifeless, pale eyes of the Shoggoths stared up at him from their tentacle ends. Emerson nudged the dead forms with trepidation. He hoped none of them lay in wait and came back to life. He grabbed the stock of his gun and shuddered. He'd hoped never to see the foul creatures this close ever again. But in death, at least, they seemed less frightening.

  But not much. He swallowed to loosen the tight knot in his throat. God, he wanted to be far from these hot spots. But where could he go? Nowhere was safe anymore and untouched by the chaos. He didn't think a place where fear didn't live existed any more. He sighed and faced Denna. "What do you think? Any more surprises?"

  She shuddered. "I hope not."

  "Everything will be okay." He checked the explosives in the extra pouch he'd added to his belt and adjusted the army's latest experimental pistol they'd given him and ensured it was firm in its lead-lined holster.

  Denna nodded. "These creatures… I've seen nothing like them," she said.

  "What in god's name happened here?" General Cobb entered the room. His tilted head was even more pronounced to the side, and he examined the frozen corpses of the Shoggoths. He carried the bloodied pistol from the other room in his hand.

  "General, are you all right?" asked Emerson.

  Cobb waved the pistol around the room. "My neck is tight from the cold is all."

  Emerson swallowed and closed his eyes. It had begun. "Put the pistol down, General. It's contaminated. It might go off in your face."

  The General cackled. "No. I just might kill a Shoggoth or two," he said. "I think I'll keep it." He bent over and wiped the barrel across the body of one of the dead creatures.

  Emerson cringed. In death, everyone, everything deserved respect. Here, he couldn't be sure what it contaminated, diseased, and the sooner he left, the better he would feel. I
t was the Ebola outbreak in Africa all over again, except down here nobody followed a protocol to protect themselves from the virus. Emerson strode into a lab next door with both General Cobb and Denna in tow. The foul weather had not breached this room, and there no signs of any creature. Emerson unzipped his jacket. He sat and pondered what to do next. Their orders had been simple. Find out what had happened down at Mawson Station. Destroy the strange space-time vortex or whatever it was. But how? With what?

  "Emerson!" Denna cocked her weapon.

  He raised his gun and turned.

  "A niss waarm rohm at lassst," said General Cobb.

  Emerson's chest tightened at the general's sudden transformation. "Sir, I think you need to sit here and rest."

  He didn't like the way the general waved the bloodied pistol around, but he would not touch it, and on closer examination, the general's fingers had elongated. One of them twisted at a horrible angle around the trigger mechanism. Emerson stepped away. "Denna, you have any MREs in that pack of yours?"

  "Yes, Emerson."

  "Get one. I expect the General would like to sit and have a meal." Emerson didn't remove his finger from his weapon. He glanced up from the General's pistol. "General? Hungry?"

  General Cobb nodded. "I'd luff sum." His red, bloated tongue flicked across his face.

  Emerson cringed.

  Denna placed a meal on the ground in front of the General and let the MRE cook.

  "We'll be back in a moment, General." Emerson gestured for Denna to follow.

  But the General didn't seem to hear. He rocked backward and forward in front of the food and stared at the wall.

  Emerson stepped back into the roofless room. He pulled the door shut. "It would have been good if we could lock him inside."

  Denna shrugged. "It would have been better if we'd ended his misery," she said.

  Emerson nodded, but he couldn't do that to the General. "I'm not sure he's aware of the changes. Let him live out his remaining hours."

  "Hours?" said Denna. "I didn't know—" She stopped and frowned. "Can you hear that?"

  He could. The ground shuddered beneath them. It rumbled like an approaching earthquake. "Outside," he commanded.