by Ewing, Al
Some said he possessed the power to control a man’s very soul – though none who might have seen it had lived to confirm its use!
Such qualities were bizarre enough to earn him pride of place in any catalogue of horrors. But the evil scientists of the Ultimate Reich had not stopped there! They had created a means of transport as dreadful as the creature it was designed for – the terrifying Murder Chair!
BEHOLD THE MURDER CHAIR
Reader, if you dare -- behold the Murder Chair! The man-monster sat awkwardly, like a doll, on a brass and leather seat, with metal straps to hold his gigantic head in place and prevent the weight of it from snapping his neck. The back of the chair, meanwhile, was composed entirely of Babbage machines and analytical engines, constantly ticking and clicking, and connected to large gold-plated pipes – and here the true horror of the apparatus began, for those pipes extended from the back of the chair through the skull and into the tissue of Murder’s living brain!
The workings somehow fused with the criminal’s nightmare intellect, increasing his terrible mental powers beyond measure and providing him the means to control and propel the Murder Chair by thought alone – for instead of four legs, it scuttled on eight, like some unspeakable insect, each mechanical leg ending in a fearsome point suitable for gutting enemies in a single stroke! Attached to the two frontmost legs were a pair of nozzles, through which the diabolical master-brain could direct sheets of searing flame – meanwhile, the arms of the chair ended in a pair of crude robotic hands, allowing Mister Murder to do the work of his fiendish Nazi masters without assistance. In the past, he had been content to be a mere weapon of Untergang – that malign organisation created to serve the mad dreams of the seemingly immortal Fuhrer and his sinister Ultimate Reich! But, following the shocking events of the past few days, our paper can reveal that this inhuman monstrosity had been selected by the Fuhrer himself to fill the vacuum of power, and become the newest and most horrific leader of that devilish terror group!
And his first act as leader was to partner with the diabolical Jason Satan! Had there ever, in the history of mankind, been so unutterably dreadful a pair of arch-fiends collected together in one place? Never! And now their evil alliance had borne fruit – in a plot to poison the very air New York City breathed!
SLOW, AGONISING DEATH
“Tell me,” purred Satan, running his grey tongue over his yellow teeth, “will the gas we propose to create act quickly? Or... slowly?” He shuddered as his evil mind savoured the dreadful thought!
Mister Murder allowed his obscene face to crack into a grotesque smile, and the analytical engines burrowing into his skull made a soft, satisfied clack. “According to my calculations,” he said in his hollow, high-pitched voice, “death should occur within twenty to thirty hours of inhalation. During that time, the organs will rot and soften, starting with the lungs, until finally they simply melt like wax, pouring out through holes in the skin as it, too, rots away. Total liquefaction of the organs and muscle tissue will occur perhaps five or six hours after death – and finally, after no more than forty hours, the bones will crumble and desiccate. Two short days, mein herr, and New York will be a mausoleum! The streets will run with blood and powdered bone! And you and I will be the only human beings left alive!”
Jason Satan’s eyes seemed to flash, almost glowing with pleasure! “How wonderful! Oh, how perfectly perfect!” He giggled. “Although to call either of us human seems... somehow insulting.”
Mister Murder’s cracked lips stretched wider, the grin seeming to split his head in two, and his massive eyes narrowed to vicious slits. “Quite so. We are übermenschen, you and I. And may I say how pleased I am that you have finally chosen to, ah... join the winning team, as you Americans say.”
Satan giggled again, swirling the beaker of white ooze around and around before setting it down on a long table and turning to look around the room - at the machinery that would swiftly bring a nightmare reign of horror to the greatest city on Earth!
LETHAL POISON GAS
The room was a large, ostensibly disused warehouse, long ago commandeered for the purpose of terror by Untergang, and the best part of it was taken up by a massive network of copper and brass piping, feeding in and out of various distilling tanks and stills. This was the machinery that was even now slowly chugging and hissing, clanking and fuming, as it went about the business of transforming the blood of Jason Satan into lethal poison gas!
Soon, they would have enough to blanket the entire city – at which point they would load the tanks of gas onto the short, squat rocket that sat in the centre of the room, underneath the dust-covered skylight. The rocket, fuelled by hydrogen peroxide purchased on the black market, would shoot into the sky above the city like some firework of the damned – then explode and blanket the whole of Manhattan with a poisonous fog of pure, unstoppable death!
And that was only the start of their devil’s scheme! After the initial airburst, if the wind forecasts were accurate, the cloud would drift inland, bringing death to the boroughs, to the suburbs, to the small towns...
Jason Satan shivered again, hugging himself. He imagined the crowds of panicked people rushing to and fro on the sidewalks, coughing and spluttering up gobbets of their own blood and tissue! The dogs howling! The fathers trying to explain the horror to their dying children! And after that -- the corpses, stacked like cordwood in the streets!
So many corpses!
His face suddenly fell into a parody of a frown. “Oh, but what of the Frenchman?” he mused, in a mock-tragic tone.
There was a clatter of cogs from the Murder Chair, followed by a high, rasping chuckle. “Perhaps I will decide to inoculate him as well, before the end. Or perhaps – not! He is a mercenary, mein herr – If he were to remain alive, we would eventually have to pay the bill.”
His chuckle became a laugh, a high-pitched squeal of devilish mirth, and Jason Satan could not help but join his own voice to the cackling chorus – a tolling bell of terror for the city that never sleeps!
Who would save us now?
MASTERS OF TERROR
The answer – a shadow falling across a filthy skylight! A sudden crash! The air filled with shattered glass! And at the centre of the rain of razor shards – a man!
And what a man! Blond and bearded, with piercing blue eyes and skin the colour of bronze, and a familiar lightning-bolt insignia splashed across his blue shirt – the flag of Doc Thunder, America’s Greatest Hero!
Neither the shards of glass nor the twenty-foot drop seemed to trouble New York’s premier he-man, as he landed, cat-like, on the stone floor, mere feet from the deadly missile. In a voice of cold steel, he addressed the cowering villains: “You’ll pay the bill, all right.”
Those deadly masters of terror now knew fear themselves! For the hero standing to defy them was no ordinary man – this was Doc Thunder! The scientific superman born from the Ultimate Reich’s own strange science, and devoted to crushing their power wherever it might raise its merciless head!
A man capable of leaping an eighth of a mile in a single bound – so powerful that nothing less than a bursting shell could penetrate his skin! Even with their ignoble forces combined, would the malicious mind of Mister Murder and the deadly death-touch of Jason Satan be enough to subdue the hero of New York? Were even odds of two against one enough against such a powerhouse of heroism?
They thought not! And a fair fight was the last thing on their minds!
MURDERER OF MILLIONS
Satan ran to a speaking-tube dangling from the wall and screeched into it. “Savate!”
A moment later, a lithe, powerfully-built figure dressed in an orange jerkin burst in from an ante-room! Their ace in the hole – Savate, the deadly mercenary and master of the French martial art whose name he had adopted as his own!
The mysterious Man Of A Thousand Kicks had clashed a dozen times or more with America’s Greatest Hero, and always escaped to fight another day! Savate was usually hired to delay Doc T
hunder and other champions of the law for the crucial moments necessary to complete some heist or scheme – yet his strange code of honour forbade him from taking the lives of those uninvolved in the struggle between the forces of law and the criminal underworld.
But to delay Doc Thunder’s victory now would be to doom thousands to slow and painful extinction! Was Savate an unwitting dupe of the sinister forces of Untergang? Or had he finally crossed the line that separates the dashing rogue from the callous murderer of millions?
The answer will astound you! Turn to page five for more of the incredible front-page scoop this reporter had to call -- “The Fearful Fate Of Doc Thunder!”
(Note: The bare facts of this account may have been dramatically embellished in parts by ace reporter Stan ‘Scoop’ Mann in order to increase the pulse-pounding verisimilitude of this incredible story – in the mighty Clarion manner! However, we maintain that the awesome action presented herein remains true to the spirit of the original events.)
“MAKE ME ONE with everything.”
“Sure thing, buddy.” The hot dog vendor narrowed his eyes, frowning. “Hey, uh, aren’t you that El Sombrero fella?”
El Sombra grinned. He was dressed in his usual style – a pair of ragged trousers from a black tuxedo, stained with dust and blood, and nothing else, save the mask over his eyes. “What tipped you off, amigo?”
In truth, the masked swordsman had become altogether too famous for his liking after the business with Donner, Crane and Lomax; he was used to being a figure of mystery, hiding in the shadows and alleys – or better yet, out in the desert, away from all human company. Now, everyone in New York seemed to think of him as some kind of masked hero, one of the many the city had produced. It was fun, but it was distracting him from his real mission, which was why he’d taken to lurking around the docks: as soon as he found a boat that would take him across the Atlantic, he’d be on his way.
In the meantime, there was always room in his belly for another hot dog.
“Ha!” The vendor smiled, loading up the hot dog with the works. “I guess there ain’t many fellers like you walkin’ around, right? This one’s on the house, pal.”
“Muchos gracias.” El Sombra speared the hot dog deftly on the end of his sword and took a bite, and it tasted meaty, watery, decidedly unhealthy and absolutely delicious. Hot dogs, he thought to himself, were probably the single thing about New York that he’d miss the most. Maybe when he hit Berlin, he’d enjoy a quick bratwurst or two before he killed Adolf Hitler. But it wouldn’t be quite the same.
“You know, those things are gonna kill you.”
The swordsman turned to see a tall black man standing in a nearby alley. He was greying at the temples, with a patch over one eye and a large, luxuriant moustache. He was dressed outlandishly – a bright, almost fluorescent blue trench coat worn over some sort of close-fitting white jumpsuit, dotted with pouches, holsters for a knife and pistol, and an insignia El Sombra didn’t quite recognise. A pair of steel-capped combat boots completed the ensemble – not quite jackboots, but El Sombra felt himself tensing anyway. He wondered how it was he hadn’t noticed the man before. “Let me guess – you’re a nutritionist?”
The other man held up a silver badge – that insignia again, a mandala inside a five-pointed star, like an old west Sheriff’s badge, with a letter at each of the points. “Not quite. Jack Scorpio. Agent of S.T.E.A.M. Special Tactical Espionage And Manoeuvres.” El Sombra gave the badge a careful examination, looked into Scorpio’s eyes for a moment and then relaxed – a little.
“Sure, I’ve heard of you.” El Sombra nodded. “Spy guys, right?” The journal he’d stolen from Donner, the ex-head of Untergang, had mentioned them several times, and never favourably – there were rants about a ‘degenerate organisation of addicts, sexual perverts and nonconformists’ that went on for whole pages. Reading them, you’d never believe this same organisation was taking down Untergang threats all over the globe, but somehow, there it was.
Frankly, they sounded like El Sombra’s kind of people.
Scorpio smiled. “Yeah, I’ve heard of you too, true believer. Let me see if I got my story right – Mexican village, evil Nazis, brutal massacre, lone survivor. Spends nine years out in the desert grooving on some kind of way-out psychedelic scene and ends up as a living weapon. Hey, you ever hear of the Fourth Earth Battalion? My outfit back in the late ’sixties, before this whole international superspy gig.”
El Sombra shook his head. Scorpio grinned.
“Really? I could have sworn you’d read the manual I wrote. Check it out sometimes – some of the training techniques in there might look familiar. Anyway, desert, mind expansion, develops second personality of El Sombra in order to offload extreme combat stress, blah blah blah – and nine years later, to the day, our hero blows right back into that village and gives those Nazi assholes some instant karma. As in wiping them off the face of the earth. As in destroying giant robots, traction engines, Luftwaffe battalions and scientific research the Ratzis have been working on for decades – with nothing but a sword.” Scorpio looked El Sombra right in the eye, as if daring him to deny it. “You know what? That’s the kind of story I like to hear.” He opened up one of his pouches, took out a long cigarette and lit it. “Want some of this?”
“No thanks.” El Sombra wrinkled his nose at the strange scent of the smoke. He wasn’t happy with having his past summed up so casually.
“That’s fab, fervent one. More for the rest of us.” Scorpio took a long, deep drag, holding it in his lungs for a moment before exhaling. “Anyway, turns out this mystery swordsman decides cleaning house back home ain’t enough – he’s gonna take out the big bad voodoo daddy Mr Adolf Hitler himself. You do know he’s a giant killer robot now, right?”
“I know.”
“Cool. Where was I? So along the way our hero stops over in the city that swings – New York, natch – and puts the whammy on a whole nest of Nazi spies and a decidedly un-hip mad scientist who’s been giving the long-underwear crowd hassle for years. Then it’s right back to the mission, right?” He took another puff on the cigarette, breathing out slowly. “You know, effendi, I do find myself digging that story. You know what I love about it? It’s believable. It’s all stuff that could just about actually happen. Right up until the ending.” He shot El Sombra a look.
El Sombra rolled his eyes. “Don’t tell me, amigo. I hate spoilers.” He frowned. “And I’m not sure about taking advice from an undercover spy guy you can see from six blocks away. Isn’t that a little... noticeable?”
“Funny man. Take a look around, funny man.”
El Sombra looked around. The two of them might have been standing just off the street, but they weren’t exactly invisible, and New York’s docklands were a busy place at this time of day. Yet not a soul passing by was looking in their direction. Even the hot dog vendor was acting as if they just weren’t there.
Scorpio smiled. “Anti-camouflage. Draws the eye and reassures on a subconscious level. It’s all in the right shade of blue.” He took another long toke. “Day-Glo Ops are the new Black Ops, brother. You’re living in the S.T.E.A.M. age now.”
El Sombra raised an eyebrow. “It’s your world, I just live in it?”
“You got it. So, you want that ending?”
“Why not?”
“Well, it’s kind of a downer. This El Sombra cat thinks he can go straight to Berlin and take on Mecha-Hitler and the whole Ultimate Reich by himself, and he ends up six feet under – just like everyone else who tried it. And there have been many.” Scorpio took another drag. “Just having a little trouble suspending my disbelief on that one, you dig? Like, when there’s a whole country just itching to paste the paper-hanger once and for all – why would a cool fool like El Sombra try to go it alone?”
El Sombra shrugged, but there was an edge in his voice. “Maybe he thinks America is a little slow, amigo. If you people had scratched your itch a little sooner, my family would be alive now.”
/>
“I can dig it.” Scorpio nodded. “But to start the kind of war we’re talking about, you’d need the cats in Magna Britannia to turn a blind eye. They got a vested interest in things in Europe staying just the way they are, which is why our friend the freaky Führer ain’t rattled any sabres lately – except in places the Brits don’t give a damn about, like your home town. And mine. Likewise the Italians, who are grooving on our kind of frequency, politics-wise – they would love to hit Hitler where it hurts. But up until now, the rule’s been that if one country starts a party” – he dropped the remains of his cigarette on the concrete and then crushed it out with the heel of his boot – “Britain’s gonna be the one to finish it.”
“Up until now?”
“You been reading the London papers, pilgrim?”
El Sombra shook his head. “I’ve been a little busy.”
