Gears of a Mad God Omnibus

by Brent Nichols

  A burly man, dressed like a hobo but clutching a shotgun, led the charge into the house. Most of the attackers followed, but the woman in the flapper dress and another man stayed behind, staring around the yard, wild-eyed.

  Colleen drew back from the doorway, bumping into Tom as she did so. Susan and Archie were behind him, Susan clutching at Tom's arms as she tried to peer over his shoulder. Colleen pulled all three of them deeper into the workshop.

  "What's going on?" Susan's voice was a ragged whisper. Her face was white and bloodless, her eyes huge. The boys looked similarly shocked.

  "We're under attack," Colleen told them calmly. "So far they're concentrating on the house."

  "But what do they want?" Susan's voice was starting to rise, and Tom clapped a hand over her mouth. She pushed his hand away, giving him a glare. The distraction, though, had jolted her from her rising panic. Her eyes were a bit less wild when she looked back at Colleen.

  It's the stone, Colleen realized. If they don't find it in the house, they'll come looking here.

  "We need to get out of here," she told them. "Out the back. Quickly."

  The students hurried toward the back of the workshop, but Colleen found her own steps slowing. Her friends were under attack. She didn't know what the cult planned to do with the stone, but it wouldn't be good for the rest of the world. She couldn't just run.

  The back door swung open, but Tom stopped in the doorway, looking back at Colleen. The other two followed his gaze. This time it was Archie who spoke.

  "What are you doing, Colleen?"

  "I'm not sure yet," she said. "I have to do something. But you three should go."

  The door swung shut and the three of them walked back toward her. She felt a surge of affection for them, leavened with dread. Her own foolhardy example might get them killed.

  "What's the plan?" said Tom, and she opened her mouth to tell him that she didn't know. But she found herself pointing at Woody instead.

  "Let's get him over to the door.” Woody couldn’t do much, but he would be a heck of a distraction. “At the very least we can make them use up some bullets."

  Shots rang out from inside the house, and Colleen winced. She crept to the doorway and peeked out. The Packards were backing and filling as the drivers turned them around, ready for a quick getaway. The flapper and the other man had their attention focussed on the house.

  Then Woody wheezed into motion and the woman's eyes flicked to the carriage house. A shot from inside the main house drew her attention away, but she gave repeated glances at the carriage house as Tom got Woody turned around, then walked him to the doorway.

  Tom was lining Woody up with the exit when the front door of the manor house flew open and a grey-bearded man dashed out, the a stone tablet clutched to his chest. Right behind him came a pair of men dragging Carter between them. Carter's suit jacket was down around his elbows, pinning his arms to his sides. He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead and doing his best to impede his captors as they dragged him toward the nearest car.

  Colleen turned to her helpers. "New plan," she said. "We're aiming Woody at the road. We have to stop those cars."

  Susan and Archie swung open the big carriage doors while Tom feverishly jammed control strips into the slots in Woody's back. One of the gunmen turned, the man with the shotgun, and he fired at them. It was extreme range for a shotgun, though, and the pellets clattered harmlessly against the carriage door.

  A moment later, Woody came lumbering out.

  The bearded man with the tablet dove into the back seat of the first Packard. Other men leaped in or jumped onto the running boards, and the car started moving. The men holding Carter were trying to get him into the second Packard, but they were having a hard time of it. Carter kicked at them, then braced a foot on the side of the car. Finally one man bashed him across the skull with a pistol butt. Carter went limp and they shoved him into the back seat.

  The flapper emptied both of her pistols at Woody. Bullets bounced and ricocheted, one of them smashing a side window on the Packard. Woody didn't even slow down.

  The engine of the car roared and the flapper shoved her pistols into the pockets of her dress and jumped for the running board. The car lurched into motion just as Woody reached the driveway.

  The first Packard reached the main road. The second Packard smashed head-on into Woody. The metal man slid across the hood and shattered the car's windshield, and the car stopped abruptly, spilling people from the running boards. Steam erupted from under the hood, wrapping Woody in a billowing cloud.

  The first Packard came rolling down the driveway in reverse. Colleen crouched in the doorway of the workshop, watching as cultists crawled from the wrecked car or picked themselves up from the ground. Most of them ran or staggered toward the approaching car, but the flapper took out a pistol, calmly reloaded it, and pointed the gun into the back seat where Carter lay.

  Something broke inside Woody's body and he twitched on the hood. The woman swung her gun over to cover him. When he didn't move again she turned back to the passenger window and Carter. A single shot rang out.

  Colleen squeezed her eyes shut. There was a squeal of tires as the lead Packard raced away. She made herself open her eyes, then got to her feet and ran across the yard to the wrecked car.

  The flapper lay sprawled on the grass. She was dead, the side of her head a bloody mess. Colleen, hardly daring to hope, looked in the back seat of the Packard. She found Carter looking up at her, rubbing his head and scowling.

  A metallic click drew her attention to the house. Frederick stood on the porch, his brother's body at his feet and a rifle in his hands.

  "Good shot," Colleen murmured, and opened the door of the car.

  Chapter 3 – The Raid

  Hank was the only fatality among the defenders. A clerk had been pistol-whipped, and Maggie had splinters in her cheek from a bullet that had hit the door frame beside her. One cultist, the flapper, had been killed. They had one prisoner, the driver of the wrecked car. He was still unconscious as an ambulance took him away.

  More ambulances took away the clerk and the corpses. A medic treated Maggie and bandaged her cheek. Carter looked terrible, white-faced and tight-lipped, but he waved the medics away and refused to get into an ambulance.

  Half a dozen Secret Service agents arrived, tough-looking men in suits and fedoras. They argued bitterly with Carter about who would be in charge of the investigation. His Bureau of Investigation credentials didn't impress them. They finally gave in when he cited the authority given to him directly by the President.

  Archie, Susan, and Tom helped drag Woody into the workshop, then left together. All three of them were badly rattled, and Colleen wondered if she would see them again. She hoped so. She needed their help if Woody was ever going to be more than a clumsy metal gorilla.

  Shortly after that, five military police drove up in a couple of jeeps to take up guard duty. The Secret Service men departed, promising to return in the morning, and Colleen locked up the workshop. She was surprised to see that it was evening already. She felt as if the attack had happened only moments before.

  The team met for a cold supper in the kitchen of the main building. Maggie had bandages covering half of her face, Carter was clearly in pain, and none of them felt like talking. Then a phone started ringing deeper in the house.

  Carter looked up after the third ring. "Is there anyone else here?" When Maggie shrugged he said, "Maybe I should get that."

  When he came back there was a light in his eyes that had been missing since the attack. "The local police have found a dark green Packard with a bullet hole in the fender," he said. "It's no more than two miles from here. Let's go."

  There was a small arsenal in the house, and they stopped to equip themselves. Carter had been caught unarmed during the attack, and seemed determined to over-compensate. He had a pistol in a shoulder holster, and now he grabbed a shotgun and stuffed his pockets with shells.

  Maggie and Colleen
took revolvers in shoulder holsters. Colleen had been learning to shoot under Maggie's supervision. Maggie was a crack shot, and Colleen at least had a firm grasp of the basics. Her heart thumped as she holstered a pistol and pocketed a box of cartridges. She was afraid of dying, nearly as afraid of killing, but this was not a duty she could shirk. Everything she knew about the cult told her that a couple of gunfights were the least of their concerns. This was a game with very high stakes. Someone had to stop the cult, and Colleen, already up to her neck in the secret war, was uniquely qualified.

  It was dusk when Maggie stopped the car at the side of the road by a bridge over the Anacostia River. They were in open countryside just outside of Washington. Mosquitoes whined around the car as they sat, quietly fretting. After a couple of minutes a sedan pulled up alongside. Colleen recognized the two men inside. Jameson and O'Reilly were Secret Service agents. They wouldn't know any details about the cult, but they would know how to handle themselves on a raid like this.

  Carter nodded to the agents. Jameson nodded back, and Maggie started the car and drove over the bridge.

  The green Packard was in a copse of trees just off the road. Another car was parked beside it. Maggie parked almost touching the Packard's bumper, blocking it in, and the Secret Service men blocked the other car the same way.

  The five of them gathered beside the Packard, drawing their weapons and listening into the gathering darkness. A faint murmur of voices came from deeper in the trees, and Carter hefted his shotgun and led the way.

  They crept through the trees and came at last to a meadow encircled by brush. Colleen crouched, peering through shrubbery, with the others on either side of her doing the same. The shadows in the meadow were deep, but her eyes were adjusting to the darkness. She could make out several moving shapes.

  She thought back to the attack. Half a dozen cultists had escaped, and it seemed unlikely that they had gone any farther than this place. With law enforcement scouring the district for a green Packard they had gone to ground and summoned whoever had met them in the other car. That meant at least seven people, then.

  A hand touched her shoulder, tugging her gently backward. She crept back and followed Maggie's shadowy outline. The five of them gathered a dozen feet back from the edge of the trees and held a whispered conference. Jameson and O'Reilly would go left. Carter, Maggie, and Colleen would go right. In fifteen minutes they would rush the meadow from two sides.

  Carter took the lead, creeping through the trees about ten feet back from the meadow's edge. Maggie followed, and Colleen brought up the rear. A minute inched past, then another, as she worked her way along, feeling as if she were hurrying in slow motion. She struggled to keep Maggie's dark shape in sight while setting each foot down with meticulous care, feeling for sticks that might break underfoot or branches that might crackle against her legs or shoulders. Mosquitoes buzzed all around her, and she ignored them, letting them feast, focussing all of her attention on her progress through the trees.

  Suddenly goosebumps sprang up along her arms and across the back of her neck. There was an excited babble of voices from the meadow, and she froze. A strange glow shone through the trees. Maggie had stopped as well. Colleen turned, dropped to her stomach, and wormed her way along the ground until she could peer into the meadow.

  The center of the meadow was lit with a pale, eerie glow. A grey-white ball churned and writhed in the air. At first Colleen couldn't tell how big it was, until a cultist passed in front. The glowing ball was a dozen feet wide and just as tall, the bottom of it touching the grass of the meadow.

  She could see the cultists more clearly now. They milled around the ball, and she could hear their excited voices as they called to one another.

  Just for an instant, she thought something moved inside the ball, a dark shape that quickly disappeared.

  Her heart thumped hard against her ribs. There was no rational explanation for what she was seeing. Could this be a portal to the realm of Katharis? If it was, the whole world might be in a lot of trouble.

  Carter stepped out of the trees to her left. Maggie joined him a moment later, and Colleen cursed and got to her feet. Circling around so no cultists could escape was suddenly less important than interrupting whatever they were doing before something came through the portal.

  They were half way across the meadow before the Secret Service agents came out of the trees off to the left. Ahead, dark figures still capered around the glowing ball. Carter, Maggie, and Colleen were within a dozen feet of the nearest cultist before anyone noticed them.

  A black man, rolls of fat bulging from the confines of a suit jacket, spotted them and turned. He stared at the three of them, his mouth open in shock. Then his hand shot into his pocket. He pulled out a clasp knife, clicked it open, and took two lumbering steps toward Carter.

  The shotgun blasted, the man collapsed, and the meadow erupted into chaos. Colleen stood frozen, the pistol heavy in her sweat-slicked hand. Maggie, as calm as if they were on the firing range, stepped up beside her, pistol in a two-handed grip, and snapped off a couple of shots. Colleen looked where she had fired and saw a man with a sawed-off shotgun, not a dozen feet away, sagging to his knees.

  Someone emptied a pistol, six rapid shots, making Colleen flinch. Another pistol fired, and the muzzle flash drew her eyes. O'Reilly was down, Jameson beside him firing coolly at someone on the far side of the glowing ball.

  Colleen started toward the man Maggie had shot, thinking to grab the sawed-off shotgun. Her foot hit something in the grass, and she looked down. It was a carved stone, square, about a foot and a half on each side. She could see a hint of elaborate carving on the face of the stone. It was the portal stone the cultists had taken from McDougall House, or one just like it. Now she saw more, in a circle around the ball of mist.

  She reached down, but before her fingers could close over the stone she saw a rush of motion in the corner of her eye. A grey-bearded man was charging at her, trying to reload a pistol as he ran. He was wild-eyed and filthy, in a torn white shirt and ragged pants, and she swung her pistol up. There was an instant when she could have fired, but she hesitated, and he barreled into her, knocking her down.

  Her shoulders slammed into the ground and he landed across her stomach. She tried to crawl out from under him, and he grabbed at her arms. Then he dragged himself up her body and locked a hand around her throat. He stank of dirt and sweat and cigarette smoke, and his breath was hot and fetid in her face. He leered down at her, and she felt a shock of recognition.

  It was Falconer, the dapper Englishman who'd faced her in Victoria and the South Pacific. But the confident man who'd laid such careful plans was gone, replaced by a broken madman.

  His hand crushed her throat, and she hammered at his arm, then groped blindly at the ground. Her fingers touched the hard barrel of a pistol and she smiled into Falconer's face. His eyes widened a moment before she pressed the barrel of the pistol to the side of his head.

  Twice now she'd had the chance to kill him, and had spared him. No more. She squeezed the trigger.

  The gun didn't fire. Falconer took his hand from her throat, slashed at her arm, knocking the gun aside, then rolled off of her and onto his feet. He bellowed "Katharis!" and charged into the glowing ball. For a moment Colleen could see him through the white mist. Then he was gone.

  "Katharis!" The cry went up from another throat, then another. A tall, thin man with a swirling pattern drawn on his bare chest leaped over Colleen and dashed into the ball of mist.

  Colleen got to her feet and looked at the pistol in her hand. She'd grabbed Falconer's gun, the one he'd been reloading. The cylinder was still out. He'd managed to load two new cartridges. She swung the cylinder into place, stuffed the gun into her holster, and picked up her own pistol from the grass.

  Someone grunted off to her right, and she turned. Carter was grappling on the ground with a muscular young man. They traded clumsy punches as they rolled back and forth. Then the young man broke free.
Both of them scrambled to their feet. Carter lunged at the man, and the man darted away. It was a very short chase, just six running steps. Carter's grasping fingers were only inches from him as he fled into the ball of glowing mist. An instant later Carter followed him through.

  Colleen stared, frozen in horror. Then she made herself look around. Jameson knelt beside O'Reilly. Maggie was scanning the meadow, gun in hand. Bodies littered the grass, including some she hadn't seen fall. She winced when she saw a teenage boy not far from her feet. Not a single living cultist was in sight.

  The ball of mist roiled and churned, and Colleen stared at it, willing Carter to return. Long seconds crawled past, and Carter didn't appear.

  Fear was a cold knot in Colleen's stomach. With every second the knot grew bigger. Already there was a chill in her arms and legs. In a few seconds she was going to be completely paralyzed with terror. She would never see Carter again, and she would never, ever forgive herself.

  "Oh, crap," Colleen muttered. Then she took a deep breath, tightened her grip on her pistol, and ran into the swirling fog.

  Chapter 4 – The Other Side

  For a long moment there was nothing but swirling mist and a chill so sharp it burned her skin. Then she burst through the far side of the ball and stumbled to a halt.

  Her first impression was of mind-wrenching wrongness. She wanted to stumble to one side, as if down wasn't quite down. The air was dry and silent, with a hint of an odor, like musty books but different, strange.

  Rolling plains stretched before her, covered in dead grass, lit by a low, grey sky. There was no sun, just a pervasive, soft glow from the indistinct expanse of sky above her. Everything was dim and gloomy, and she shivered. The air seemed cold, though it could have been fear that chilled her.