Atomic-Age Cthulhu: Tales of Mythos Terror in the 1950s

by Robert Price

  Romero moaned.

  Freeman froze. There was nothing human in that sound. He’d known that might be the case, but knowing and seeing were two different things. “Are those straps secured?” he hissed. There was a chance, however slight, that their calculations had been off, that they had not gotten their target, but something else instead.

  “He won’t hurt you,” Cold said, circling the chair and its twitching burden. “They are not a violent people, in my experience.”

  “They aren’t people at all,” Freeman said harshly. Cold’s grin didn’t waver. He simply looked at Freeman with what the latter assumed was patient disdain. Freeman grimaced and stepped forward, sinking to his haunches beside the chair. “Can you hear me?” he said.

  Romero’s eyes found his. They no longer bulged, but instead looked drowsy. His mouth opened and he gurgled something. It was English, but mangled into incoherence. Cold had said that might happen. After transference it took a few hours or even a few days for them to attain full control, which meant that they had plenty of time to isolate and restrain it, to question it and learn what they needed. To learn what they needed to know to save American lives in the event of a full-blown nuclear strike.

  Freeman hesitated, overcome with the thought of millions of minds jumping from their bodies at the moment of destruction, hurtling to safety in new bodies, a new time. Oh, there’d be a few who’d go ahead of them, to prepare the way, in imitation of the thing that crouched in Romero’s body, colonists to another time, readying the world for invasion-no, migration.

  He stood and plucked at his shirt. The Box was still full of heat and tropical smells. “How long can we hold him?” he said, looking at Cold. The spook shrugged.

  “Until you wish me to send him back,” Cold said. There was a device, Freeman knew. He had seen it reproduced in certain diaries, but frankly, he had no idea how it worked. The visitors who were readying themselves to return to their own time constructed them with the help of men like Cold. Though a cursory attempt had been made at discovering the identities of the rest of those involved in such efforts, nothing conclusive had ever come of it. Cold had made sure of that.

  “Will they come to look for him-it? Can they?” he said.

  “You had best hope not,” Cold said, tapping his brow. A chill coiled through Freeman. He had never even considered-

  “Will this work?” he croaked, more to say something than because he expected an answer. Cold looked at him pityingly.

  “It’s a little late to be asking that now, isn’t it?”

  Freeman looked at Romero, at the thing in Romero and cleared his throat. He looked back at Cold. “Is it worth it, I mean?”

  Cold cocked his head. For a moment, Freeman thought his grin faltered. Then the strap broke and Romero’s hand grabbed his and then Freeman was screaming.

  A kaleidoscope of images crashed into his head all at once. Not of the great towers and vessels described in the diaries, but of basalt vaults and windowless edifices and of the long darkness. He saw the cone shaped beings firing strange weapons at him, hurting him, driving him back into a crackling cage and he knew they’d got it wrong, that their calculations had been off, that they’d gotten something else and that it was hungryohgoditwashungry—

  T plus ten hours, four seconds.

  Operation Ranger proceeded as authorized and the world went white as Frenchman Flat was boiled down to glass, and Freeman’s facility with it. Trapped inside the Box, the thing that had been Freeman and Romero and a half dozen others screamed and screamed and screamed as atomic fire reduced it to carbonized dust.

  Freeman’s hand had burst like an overripe fruit, wriggling and sloughing into Romero’s, two limbs becoming one. Two mouths opened and one groan had rattled forth and the air in the Box had shifted at the sound, coalescing and surging like an incipient hurricane. Romero had torn his other arm free and swung it into Freeman, the two men had splashed together like clay, their clothes tearing and flapping as they bled into one another and became something else. Something monstrous that spat alien curses and tried to re-build its body from the materials at hand.

  Cold had left it to it. Preparations had already been made. The records could be prettied up later, to show a scheduled test, as opposed to a containment effort.

  He watched the mushroom cloud vomit upwards into the sky, his smile bland and unwavering. Someone behind him coughed. Cold didn’t turn around. “Freeman’s plan has been judged a failure and his notes classified,” he said. “And the evidence has been tidied up.”

  If Freeman had been there, he would have been surprised to see the quick study from his briefing. The man shifted from one foot to the next, clearly uncomfortable, though whether with the situation or simply in general was unclear. “The warning was appreciated,” the quick study said.

  “Simply doing my part,” Cold said. Which was true, as far as it went…the visitors required help in returning to the past and hiding the traces of their visit, and Cold had provided them that help for centuries without measure. Who better to render aid to time travelers than immortals, after all?

  “I didn’t know that the process would work on one of polypous race,” Cold said, rolling a finger towards the expanding cloud. “Quite a trick that, I must say. Peaslee’s texts implied—”

  “Peaslee knew only what we told him,” the man said.

  Cold chuckled. “He was something of a double agent, wasn’t he? Spilling your secrets, but only those you wanted them to know.”

  “Much like you,” the quick study said. Cold’s smile twitched.

  “Yes. They could learn much from you…” Cold said.

  “They have learned enough, despite our-your-best efforts,” the other man said. “If they discovered the secret—”

  “Which they will, inevitably,” Cold said and laughed. The quick study swallowed.

  “Yes, you are proof enough that they have the means and the tenacity.” The quick study frowned. “They are dangerous. You are dangerous. You should be exterminated, like the star-headed cannibals and their servants.”

  Cold turned. “Never doubt it, my friend. But now that they have seen what wolves await them on this path, they will choose another. Your great plan is safe, and humanity will remain trapped in its moment, for the moment. You are safe from them and them from you.”

  “It is better that way.”

  “Debatable, but pithy,” Cold said, his grin stretched tight. He looked back at the cloud and thought of the screaming thing and what had likely been its last moments and then of Freeman’s last question. He looked at his gloved hand, and the slight squirming of the things beneath the leather.

  Cold made a fist and murmured, “Things are learning to walk that ought to crawl.” Then his smile stretched to its full length. The quick study stepped back, looking nervous. Cold thought he had good reason to be.

  “It’s not a matter of if, you see, but when,” Cold said. And he laughed.

  IT CAME TO MODESTO

  BY EDWARD M. ERDELAC

  “I never see you around after school.”

  “I work late at my dad’s garage. I get off early on Saturday though. Wanna see me then? Maybe catch a flick at the State?”

  Georgie Calato saw the punch coming in the reflection of the big glass window of Burge’s.

  Debbie Lomax had put down her copy of Look and giggled to her two friends as they smiled around their milkshake straws at his approach, which was the sign that had emboldened him to ask her out. Debbie was in his biology class. Even though he was a new kid, she’d been easy with the smiles for him. She was a beauty, long necked and blonde, with big doe brown eyes and creamy skin that flashed between the hem of her poodle skirt and the cuffs of her pink bobby socks, and on the slender, hairless arms that slipped out from under her angora sweater.

  Georgie took the punch on his shoulder. It was a glance, but it stung, coming from a guy like Jimmy Lucas, wide receiver for the Downey football team.

  Jimmy and his croni
es, that asthmatic toadie of a towel boy Babe Wilkes and the big shouldered tackle, Dombrowski, had formed a semi-circle around him and the girls, blocking the way to the parking lot, looking like a gang in their blue and silver Knights jackets.

  Jimmy had one of those pasty faces you could see the blood move through. His cheeks were flushed like somebody had slapped him.

  “I told you not to talk to my girl, paisano,” Jimmy snarled.

  That was only partly true. Georgie wasn’t really a paisano. There was no Indian in him that he knew of, though his mom had been part Mexican and his dad was Italian. But Jimmy had slammed him against a locker after gym and told him plainly to keep his garlicky hands off his girl.

  “We were just talking, Jimmy,” Debbie said, annoyed.

  “Yeah well now you can say goodbye,” said Jimmy.

  “Cool out, man,” Georgie warned.

  “Or what?”

  “Big tough guy when you got your friends with you,” Georgie muttered.

  “Least I got friends, Pancho.”

  “You got a car?”

  “Yeah I got a car,” Jimmy said, folding his big arms. “So what? You writin’ a book?”

  Georgie knew Jimmy had a car. He had seen it in his dad’s shop when it had come in for an oil change. A spanking new Studebaker Golden Hawk, cherry red with white fins and a big 352 bent eight under the hood.

  “Cut the gas, man. What do I gotta do, spell it out for you?” Georgie said coolly.

  “This feeb wants to race!” Babe exclaimed, smacking his gum like a tough guy in a gangster movie.

  “What d’you got, greaser? Your grandma’s old Plymouth or something?”

  “That’s my car,” Georgie said, pointing over Dombrowski’s shoulder to the silver Rambler Rebel with the copper stripe, catching and smearing the pink neon glow of the Burge’s sign in the parking lot.

  Again, this was only partly true. The car had been left at his dad’s shop by a guy who had skipped town. Georgie’s dad had kept the thing covered in the back parking lot in case the guy showed up, but it had been a week and a half. Georgie had started taking the car out for a spin late at night. He hadn’t bugged his dad yet about claiming it. A four door, it didn’t look like much compared to Jimmy’s Golden Hawk, but it was still a beauty. 327 V-8 engine, Holley 4 Barrel, stainless steel dual exhaust (he had flipped the mufflers backwards himself for an extra kick), it had 6-ply Goodyears that cornered like nobody’s business. He’d got it up to one hundred and thirty out on Route 99.

  He was pretty confident that despite the smaller engine, he could beat Jimmy’s Golden Hawk. His car, fast as it was, was as-is. Jimmy was a cruiser, not one of these motor heads that raced out at Laguna Seca. He didn’t even change the oil himself. The car was probably a birthday present from his daddy, who owned a chain of shoe stores in the valley, chosen for the look, not what was in the guts. Like most things in Modesto.

  “I don’t know Jimmy,” Dombrowski said in his friend’s ear. “These Mexicans are all crazy reefer addicts. You don’t wanna race no reefer addict.”

  “I ain’t no Mexican,” Georgie hissed, which wasn’t entirely true, “and I ain’t no reefer addict.” Which was.

  Jimmy’s five cent blue eyes stared into Georgie’s penny browns.

  “What’re we racin’ for?”

  Georgie had no money. He had the car…sort of. But if he lost it and his old man found out, he was dead.

  “Tell you what, paisano,” Jimmy said. “I win, you stay away from Debbie.”

  That made Georgie grin, because he knew now Debbie had something for him. Probably Jimmy had noticed. That’s why he’d put him up against the locker.

  Behind him, Debbie played outraged.

  “Hey! I’m not some kind of piece of meat you two Neanderthals can just fight over!”

  But she was fighting to keep the excitement out of her voice.

  “Crazy, man. Whatever you say,” said Georgie, shrugging, like it was no big thing.

  But it was.

  A couple of the carhops that had skated over during the to-do flitted from car to car spreading the word, until every kid in the Burge’s lot knew Jimmy Lucas was gonna race that new kid over Debbie Lomax. The chicks were swooning ‘cause wasn’t it so romantic and the nerds were rooting to see that asshole Jimmy get blown off. The gear heads were flipping to see that cherry of a Studebaker lay a patch. All the Knights piled into Babe’s blue DeVille and passed a jack of whiskey between them, talking about how they couldn’t wait to see Jimmy give that dirty Mexican kid what was coming to him.

  They all left at separate times so as not to tip the heat off as to what was shakin,’ but everybody knew to be at the 99 crossing outside of town in an hour.

  Georgie thought about how things might finally turn around for him if he beat this kid and the whole school was there to see it.

  He’d had it tougher than most kids, dark as he was. He knew he was good looking. He’d figured what the long stares of girls meant early on, just as he’d figured out what the looks of the white boys on their arms meant. They didn’t know what he was. He was too dark to be one of them, but he didn’t talk like a Mexican. All they knew was they hated him.

  He didn’t speak a lick of Spanish, so the Mexicans didn’t have anything to do with him either. Not that he was worried about fitting in with them anyway.

  Georgie and his old man had moved to Modesto to get away from that whole scene back in El Paso. His dad was dark haired, but pretty fair. His parents couldn’t hold hands in public without getting spit on. Then a year ago this redneck and his buddies had been settling a bill in the front office of the old man’s garage. When they saw Georgie’s mom come in and give his dad a peck on the cheek, they went right out to their truck and pealed out of the parking lot, swinging by to pitch a cinder block through the front window. Georgie’s mom had been straightening out the magazines in the waiting area. Dad had told him late one night, in between sobs of hard, kerosene-smelling breath, that she had looked up just as the block came through the glass and hit her in the face.

  Now clinking bottles lay in Georgie’s mom’s spot in the old man’s bed.

  There was a line of cars waiting on either side of the road when Georgie pulled up. They flicked on their headlights, illuminating the dark country road like some kind of Hollywood premiere.

  Georgie’s Rebel growled its way up to the starting point. Jimmy was already waiting in the Studebaker. Georgie could see the glint of spectacles and the shine of the kids’ eyes in the dark spaces between the parked cars, like hungry animals looking out. He tried to keep cool and disinterested, running his comb through his greased hair and glancing out the open window, hoping to catch sight of Debbie. He did grab an eyeful of this dark haired china skinned girl with blood red lipstick, a motorcycle jacket and tight green cigarette pants. She was wearing sunglasses, despite the night. He’d never seen her around.

  Georgie pulled up alongside Jimmy, who was chewing his gum furiously, looking bug-eyed at him under the brim of a Reds cap.

  Georgie revved the engine a couple times to let the kid know what he was up against. The mechanical gargling of the unmuffled V-8 seemed to fill up the empty countryside, drowning out the crickets like a steel lion groaning to be fed asphalt.

  Jimmy turned up his car radio. Chuck Berry was lighting into ‘Roll Over Beethoven’.

  Georgie grinned across the gap at him and turn up his own radio to the same station. The onlookers mistook it as some kind of ritual, and soon a dozen or more car radios were blasting in the night.

  Babe Wilkes stepped into the road between the two revving cars and shouted to be heard.

  “You race to the big house on the hill out past the bend and back! Got it?”

  Georgie nodded, but watched Jimmy the whole time. Jimmy looked nervous. He nodded emphatically.

  Babe slapped the roof of his friend’s car and jogged backwards till he was in the beams of their headlamps. He took a Buck Rogers pistol out of his pocke
t and held it in the air.

  Georgie spun the Rebel’s tires with a piercing squeal. Jimmy pulled the brim of his hat low.

  Babe pumped the tin trigger, little red and yellow sparks spouting up into the sky.

  The drivers popped their clutches and screamed past Babe, swiftly leaving him waving his raygun in their taillights.

  The two cars sped down the gauntlet of onlookers, Chuck Berry wailing in their ears, early in the morning, giving them his warning not to step on his blue suede shoes.

  Georgie squeezed the wheel and watched the needle climb on the speedometer. In six seconds it inched past the sixty mark, two hundred fifty five horsepower vibrating beneath his All-Stars as he urged the pedal to the thrumming floor.

  The Golden Hawk flew like a red rocket on the fourth of July, Jimmy leaning over the wheel, eyes bugging.

  The Rebel was a spurt of mercury that slipped ahead inch by inch, devouring the black road ahead.

  They blew free of the gauntlet of cars and in the rearview Georgie saw the kids pour into the road, shadow people jumping in the beams like excited cannibals that quickly receded into a far off spot of light.

  It was just George, Jimmy and Chuck Berry in the dark, the wind tearing through the car, blowing in his ears.

  He had this.

  When he skidded to a stop in front of all those kids there’d be no more paisano, no more cockroach jokes. Everybody’d know he’d whupped Jimmy Lucas and won his girl. Maybe he’d even have the gumption to talk his old man into letting him have the Rebel, take it out to Laguna Seca on the weekends, get the garage to sponsor him. Sure, him and his old man, they’d slap some big magnet signs on the doors—CALATO’S AUTO REPAIR. Debbie’d be there to cheer him from the stands.

  Georgie saw the lights of the old house up on the hill and knew the bend was coming, so he slowed for the turn. It was just enough to let Jimmy catch up.

  Georgie spared a glance at Jimmy. He saw what the asshole meant to do right off. He wondered if his mother had felt the same way when she saw the cinder block coming through the window.