Stairway to Hell

by CW Hawes

  “But we’re moving away from that stuff,” Mostyn said, “we’re trying to be better.”

  “Yeah, right. Well, these people are better. They have one fault. Otherwise, this society is perfect. It’s fucking utopia, Pierce. Everyone truly is equal.”

  “What about the slaves?” Zink asked.

  “Most of them are dead,” Slezak shot back. “How are they any different than a machine?”

  Jones sat next to her. “Look, Candy—”

  “Go fuck yourself, DC. I heard all about the big outworlder and his pet K’n-yanian.”

  “But—”

  “Get the hell out of my face, DC. You’re nothing but a typical man looking to get his rocks off. Screw you.”

  Jones moved away.

  “Don’t take me back, Pierce. I’m happy here and I want to stay.”

  Mostyn looked at the group. “Well?”

  Beames shrugged. “Let her stay. Getting out of here is going to be hard enough as it is.”

  Zink nodded, and said, “I agree.”

  Mostyn look at Jones and said his name.

  “Whatever she wants,” he replied.

  Mostyn looked at Baker. “What Jones said.”

  The room quivered and a boom sounded in the distance. There was a shimmer, and then H’tha-dub and Dotty Kemper appeared. When Kemper saw Mostyn, her face broke into a smile. She ran to him, threw her arms around him, and kissed him with abandon.

  Surprise showed on H’tha-dub’s face and then a black cloud descended. She pointed at Mostyn, yelled a string of K’n-yanian words, and disappeared.

  Slezak burst out laughing, and she became everyone’s focus. “Man, Pierce, I think you just fucked this up big time.”

  “What did she say?” he asked.

  “She said, if I translate freely, you’re a bigger dick then Pánfilo. You used her love to get what you wanted when all along you already had a wife.”

  Kemper pushed him away. “What? What’s this wife shit?”

  “Look, Dotty—”

  “Don’t you ‘look, Dotty’ me, Pierce Mostyn. You were fucking her, weren’t you?”

  “Dotty.”

  “Weren’t you?” Dotty’s voice was loud and harsh.

  “I did it to save your ass!”

  “You did it just to get a piece of ass when you couldn’t have mine!”

  Slezak was howling with laughter. Jones had a smug look on his face. Beames looked perturbed, and Zink was expressionless. Baker, sitting off by himself, shook his head.

  “Look, the price for her cooperation was marriage,” Mostyn explained.

  “Marriage!” Kemper’s voice shot up into the high register, and was practically squeaking.

  “So I agreed. I saw no other way for us to get out of here. We needed someone on the inside.”

  Kemper wasn’t buying it. “What you wanted on the inside was your dick. Goddamn you, Pierce. God. Damn. You!”

  Tears ran down Kemper’s cheeks and she swiped at them with the backs of her hands.

  Mostyn was about to say something, thought better of it, and instead changed his entire demeanor. “Enough. What’s done is done. We have to leave now. There is no telling what H’tha-dub or B’ya-lub will do. We can’t dawdle.”

  He quickly explained the plan. “Any questions?”

  Kemper asked, “Are we taking Slezak?”

  “No,” Mostyn replied. “She wants to stay.” To the linguist, he said, “Are you going to betray us?”

  “Don’t have to,” she replied. “You won’t get far.”

  “We might not, but we have to try.”

  “Suit yourself. You going to leave me tied up?”

  “No. Jones, untie her.”

  Jones complied. When he was done, she said, “Thanks, Jonesy.” And gave him a peck on the cheek. “After they make you a y’m-bhi, I’m going to ask them to give you to me.”

  Jones gave her a hard look. “I really liked you. Glad I found out what a cunt you really are before anything got serious.”

  She spit in his face. Jones wiped it away and stood up.

  “Alright. Let’s go,” Mostyn ordered.

  The ground shook and a boom sounded in the distance. Mostyn led his people out into the street.

  20

  Mostyn had counted on H’tha-dub using her dematerializing ability to get them into the sewer system. With her gone, and not knowing if she’d betrayed them, Mostyn decided to forego using the sewer and proceed directly overland. He didn’t want to get trapped like the proverbial rats in a maze.

  Off in the distance, there was a definite green glow coming from the direction of the tunnel. What that meant, Mostyn wasn’t certain. But if he had to bet money on it, he’d wager something supernatural was in the air. The question was, which side was recruiting other-dimensional, or inter-dimensional help. Or maybe both sides were. If that was the case, then God help the planet.

  Being the rest period, there weren’t a lot of people on the streets. Lights shone from many of the upper floor windows of the tall buildings, and Mostyn guessed that some of the K’n-yanians were watching whatever was going on at the tunnel. Much like the picnickers who went out to watch the First Battle of Bull Run.

  Only Jones had been to the old and abandoned temple of the hideously grotesque deity Tsathoggua, and the one who was arguably the most powerful and destructive of the K’n-yanian pantheon. According to Langley’s recounting of Zamacona’s narrative, that was the reason the monster was no longer worshiped. Mostyn let Jones lead the way.

  The group briskly walked across the expanse of park land. Jones in the lead, followed by Doctors Beames, Zink, and Kemper, and finally Mostyn. Making faster time than if they’d gone through the sewer tunnels, they arrived at the temple to find the two docile slaves with the gyaa-yothn. No one else appeared to be around.

  “Beames, Kemper, secure our transportation. Zink, Baker, take point.” Mostyn indicated where he wanted them to watch. “Jones, you’re with me.”

  Standing on either side of the door, Mostyn pushed it open. Out came a half-dozen y’m-bhi with spears. Jones wrenched a weapon away from one of the live-dead and shoved it through the thing’s head. When that didn’t stop it, Jones picked it up and threw it at several of the creatures. Yet on they came.

  “Damn,” Jones said, “that always works in the zombie movies.”

  Mostyn holding one in a full Nelson, called out, “They aren’t zombies!” He broke the thing’s neck and it still flailed about even when two of the other y’m-bhi jabbed their spears into its body trying to get at Mostyn.

  “How are we going to kill these things?” Jones shouted, using one like the blade on a bulldozer to force a path into the temple.

  “Fire!” Mostyn yelled. “Beames, Kemper! Light the torches!”

  “With what?” Kemper shouted. “Your infidelity?”

  “There’s a leather pouch with hot coals in it,” Mostyn yelled back.

  Zink and Baker joined in the melee to relieve Mostyn and Jones, but nothing they did would stop the already dead, yet alive creatures.

  A y’m-bhi wrestled Zink to the ground. Another was menacing Baker with a spear, which he frantically kept batting away by using a broken spear shaft like a bat. Mostyn was down and frantically trying to stop one of the living-dead from throttling the life out of him. Jones, in the temple, had grabbed a knife and, with back against a wall, was trying to hold three of the creatures at bay in the dark.

  Having gotten a couple torches lit, Beames and Kemper, flaming torches in hand, and carrying jars of oil, were dousing and igniting the y’m-bhi. The live-dead beings flared up like dry kindling and in a matter of moments collapsed in burning heaps.

  “There, Mostyn. I saved your ass and didn’t fuck anyone to do it.”

  “Dotty.”

  “Don’t. You. Dare. Dotty. Me. Now, Mister Boss Man, get us the hell out of here.”

  They grabbed their equipment, loaded it onto the gyaa-yothn, and mounted the hideous beasts. />
  “All right everyone,” Mostyn began, “we ride for our lives. Follow me!”

  Before Mostyn could spur his creature on, in front of him appeared H’tha-dub. Standing proud and erect, her head thrown back, she pointed at Mostyn. Her thoughts rang out so all could hear. “You betrayed my love. You used me, though you love another. I betrayed my people for you, and now I have no home. I die in the amphitheater or I leave with you. Since I do not wish to become a y’m-bhi, you must take me with you. You, Mostyn Pierce, owe me that much.”

  “Yes, I do. Mount up.”

  “I will lead,” she informed them. “The freemen are on their way.” H’tha-dub mounted a gyaa-yothn and urged it into a shambling gallop.

  “Follow her!” Mostyn ordered. Behind him, he heard Kemper say, “Shit.”

  21

  Not following the road, H’tha-dub led Mostyn and his team across the countryside. The shambling monstrosities were not as fast as horses, but they moved faster than Mostyn and his people could on foot. And because of their rudimentary intelligence, they could be given instructions in a way a horse never could.

  Quicker than Mostyn thought possible, they found themselves on the road that led to the tunnel. When they reached the crest of the hill and the tunnel entrance was visible in the distance, they rested the gyaa-yothn. Before them was a war zone. The tunnel entrance was three times larger than before and the stone was blackened as though by fire.

  The field was littered with partially buried robots and booted feet sticking out of the ground. Scores, maybe hundreds, of drones lay smashed on the ground. The tunnel entrance shimmered green and the air near the domed roof also shimmered with a greenish hue.

  To their left, some distance away, stood an army of what was probably thousands of y’m-bhi and slaves, and several dozen freeman and K’n-yanians mounted on gyaa-yothn.

  “Good God,” Baker muttered.

  “So much for the technologically superior,” Kemper said.

  “We have company,” Jones called out.

  Mostyn turned and saw, in the distance, maybe twenty riders heading their way. He began issuing orders.

  “Jones, get the machine gun ready. Baker, help him with the ammo feed.”

  The men dismounted and Baker said, “We’re on it.”

  “The rest of you, look lively now. Dismount and get ready to fight should any of them break through.

  Mostyn sent his thoughts to H’tha-dub asking her to tell the gyaa-yothn to lie down and form a living wall for everyone to take cover behind. She did so, and the docile creatures complied.

  Up the rise the riders came. When they were about a hundred yards out, Jones opened fire, sending a furious stream of death into the enemy’s ranks. And down they went. Two managed to veer off and avoid the carnage. Kemper took out one with a round from her rifle and H’tha-dub dematerialized the other. When he rematerialized, his feet were sticking out of the butt of a now dead gyaa-yothn.

  Amazement was all over Kemper’s face. “Now that is something I have to learn.”

  H’tha-dub smiled, and said in heavily accented English, “I teach.”

  The riders and their mounts lay dead and dying. However, the noise of the skirmish had attracted the attention of a unit of live-dead and they began marching towards Mostyn’s group.

  “Damn,” Jones said. “It’s those zombies that won’t die.”

  “Get the torches and oil ready,” Mostyn ordered.

  The y’m-bhi, armed with swords, spears, and crossbows, charged up the rise. Burning torches and oil ready, Mostyn and his people met the charge. Zink took an arrow in the thigh. Beames doused a y’m-bhi with oil and set it on fire. It dropped its sword, ran into another live-dead, and they fell together in a burning heap.

  Mostyn knocked down one of the live-dead and yanked a spear away from another, when it disappeared. He silently thanked H’tha-dub, and shoved the spear through the head of yet another of the zombi-like creatures, pinning it to the ground.

  Jones and Baker, each with a sword, were hacking off heads and limbs. One headless and armless corpse was stumbling around until Beames set it on fire.

  Using her torch as a club, Kemper bashed a y’m-bhi in the head and its hair caught fire. She doused it with oil and it turned into a human torch. Another zombie-like creature came at her and Kemper parried the thing’s sword thrust. She then turned and smashed in its face with her torch. The creature staggered back, and the wounded Zink splashed it with oil and set it on fire. The thing took off running and impaled itself on another creature’s spear. The two tumbled down the hill in a burning heap.

  A rider suddenly appeared. Beames disappeared and only her hips and legs reappeared, sticking out of the ground. Kemper fired her revolver and the bullet struck the K’n-yanian in the chest. Mostyn fired his pistol. The forty-five caliber hollow point punched its way through the man’s face and exited the back of his skull in a shower a bone, blood, and brains. He fell off his gyaa-yothn, his body twitching and jerking until it lay still.

  H’tha-dub saved Beames from suffocating by dematerializing and then rematerializing her above ground. She then turned her attention to the few remaining y’m-bhi attackers and dematerialized them.

  Around Jones and Baker were a slew of animated body parts jumping and rolling around. The most disconcerting were the hands crawling crab-like, trying to fulfill their mission. H’tha-dub dematerialize them.

  “Look!” Zink exclaimed.

  Everyone looked to where he was pointing. The green glow at the tunnel entrance was thick as heavy fog and iridescent.

  “Look up there!” Baker yelled.

  High in the atmosphere, another thick iridescent green cloud had formed.

  “What the hell?” Jones muttered.

  “That’s exactly what’s happening,” Mostyn said.

  Up in the air, a black line appeared in the green cloud and gradually grew wider. Tentacles appeared and pushed the opening even wider until it was a large black hole. A hole in the fabric of space and time.

  “Oh my God,” Kemper shouted.

  Out of the hole crawled a noxiously blasphemous monstrosity of immense proportions. An amoeboid thing with bulging yellow eyes that floated anywhere on its formless body. Scores of tentacles protruded out of the thing. It hovered in the air and then slowly descended towards the ground.

  “What the hell have the K’n-yanians done?” Mostyn asked, his voice laced with fear.

  Out of the tunnel entrance poured a gelatinous blob, radiating a rainbow of iridescent colors across its undulating surface. When its formless bulk was free from the tunnel, like an enormous blimp, it launched itself into the air.

  “Oh my God,” Kemper said. “Bardon must be at it, too.”

  Everyone on the ground watched the two inter-dimensional obscenities collide and begin a titanic duel. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed.

  Bardon’s blob formed itself into a six-fingered hand and wrapped its fingers around the tentacled amoeboid creature. The amoeboid thing countered by wrapping tentacles around the blob. Each entity trying to wrap itself around the other as an amoeba around a particle of food.

  Mouths appeared and disappeared. Lightning bursts flashed from each being. And round and round they spun like an inter-dimensional ouroboros.

  “Now!” Mostyn yelled. “To the tunnel! Run!”

  Across the wreckage-strewn plain they ran, while above them the colossal insanities battled in the sky.

  Up the steep slope they climbed. On the edge, they saw six y’m-bhi.

  “Grenades,” Mostyn called out.

  Jones nodded and passed them out to everyone.

  “On my command,” Mostyn said. “Pull pin. And throw!”

  The grenades came raining down on the y’m-bhi and exploded, ripping the living dead into chunks of blasted flesh and bone.

  “Now, into the tunnel. Jones, you first. The rest follow,” Mostyn ordered.

  The team members and H’tha-dub followed Jones into the tunne
l that would take them to the upper world and freedom. Various body parts of the live-dead slaves were still animated, but did not pose a threat. Kemper kicked the shrapnel pitted head of one y’m-bhi like a soccer ball as it tried to bite her foot, and watched it bounce down the steep slope before she turned and disappeared into the tunnel.

  Baker entered the tunnel, and that left Mostyn. He turned and looked at the dueling entities that were from somewhere not of this universe. Blasphemies that nature itself cannot comprehend. He watched Bardon’s blob, at least he thought it the thing Bardon must’ve summoned, increase its size several times and wrap itself around the tentacled thing as a sheet of plastic wrap around a piece of meat. A brilliant light shown inside and then all was dark.

  Bardon’s creature, a colorless blimp-like thing, slowly settled to the ground. All Mostyn could imagine is that perhaps it was wounded. Once it had settled on the ground, he watched it flatten out and then slowly the iridescent rainbow began to ripple across its surface. Then it was gone! And charging across the plain were thousands of y’m-bhi and slaves.

  “Holy shit!” Mostyn exclaimed. “They must’ve dematerialized it!”

  He turned and ran into the tunnel. A hundred feet in, he met Baker.

  “The others are on their way out,” he said. “I waited for you.”

  “They’re coming,” Mostyn panted. “By the thousands. Let’s go!”

  The two men ran after their compatriots and soon caught up to them due to the wounded Zink.

  “Keep going!” Mostyn yelled. “They’re coming. Thousands! Give me the grenades.” The others gave him the four remaining grenades.

  On they pushed, up the incline, Mostyn remaining at the back of the group, and when Zink couldn’t go on, Jones hoisted him up in a fireman’s carry.

  “Promise me you’ll go on a diet when we get back,” Jones grunted.