World War Cthulhu: A Collection of Lovecraftian War Stories

by John Shirley

  She was greeted by a cacophony of agonized screams, approaching sirens, and the chatter of automatic gunfire. Lifting her head, she saw that Die Glocke Hotel lay on its side, the floor slanting up beside her like a wall. The closed swimming pool had split open; she lay in its shallow water, cupped in the rotunda’s curved wall. A whole section of the actual wall of the hotel’s top level had broken away, like the shell of a giant brass egg. She could see the city out there, and several of the other members of Operation Wunderwaffe who had survived the fall.

  These soldiers had climbed outside the wreckage, where the shattered orb lay in a thin inky pool: the burst bubble that had once enclosed the hotel. The soldiers were firing at the dog-sized fleas that lay scattered on the pavement, paddling their legs helplessly as if out of their element. From where she lay, propped up painfully on one elbow, Sia also saw a number of other life forms that had previously been concealed by the black fluid, since they didn’t glow as the flea-things had done. These larger creatures were globs of honeycombed tissue, sprouting feathered black wings. They flopped horribly, like dying fish exposed to the air. As she watched, she saw Private Birkett step nearer to one of these entities, point his Sturm, and shoot it with a capsule of green-glowing corrosive plasma. Within moments, the blob-like life form—convulsing even more frantically—began to dissolve. Before even a minute had passed, it had vanished altogether, leaving only a steaming smudge.

  Sia pulled herself to her feet, battered and wrenched but apparently with nothing broken. She had lost her helmet, and blood trickled into one eyebrow, but she swiped it away as she turned in a circle to survey the immediate damage.

  A government agent split into halves by one of the panels that had covered the pool. A Kalian woman moaning, fighting to remain conscious as she clutched the end of her severed leg in both hands. A Colonial Forcer kneeling beside the twelve-year-old Kalian boy, holding his hand as the child wept quietly, either physically or emotionally unable to rise.

  As Sia completed her unsteady little circle, she spotted him … only a few paces away.

  She staggered to him, and slowly sagged to her knees beside him. There was no need for urgency; it was clear that Karik was dead.

  He sat up with his back supported by the slanted floor, his head canted to one side as if his neck had been broken. His eyelids were half closed, or half open. From under them glistened his eyes of volcanic glass. A length of brassy metal, a curved support joist, had impaled him through the upper chest like a dragon’s claw. Blood had flowed heavily down his abdomen, obscuring much of his tattooing there. The wound itself was torn through the Kalian inscriptions, these words of power that had been devised to counteract the potent text in the book called the Fizala.

  Sia took Karik’s limp hand, and whispered, “You did it. Okay? You did it.”

  But she looked again toward the broken wall, and the city of Punktown beyond. With night descending, the sky had turned a lurid red-gold. Yes, the Nine had banished Ugghiutu, and sealed the rent through which he had come. Yet now the pages of the living book had been ripped. Were there others out there in the city who could step in to replace those pages, should that entity or any of his brethren Outsiders be summoned again?

  Emergency vehicles came floating down from the sky, their sirens combining into one banshee wail, and Sia found herself reaching up to cover her ears again, and closing her eyes, as if to block out any nightmares that might return.

  ABOUT THE EDITORS

  Brian M. Sammons has been writing reviews on all things horror for more years than he'd care to admit. Wanting to give other critics the chance to ravage his work for a change, he has penned a few short stories that have appeared in such anthologies as Arkham Tales, Horrors Beyond, Monstrous, Dead but Dreaming 2, Horror for the Holidays, Twisted Legends, Mountains of Madness, Deepest Darkest Eden, and others. He has edited the anthologies; Cthulhu Unbound 3, Undead & Unbound, Eldritch Chrome, Edge of Sundown, and Steampunk Cthulhu. For the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game he wrote the book “Secrets,” has contributed to both Keeper's Companions, wrote a companion scenario for the Keeper's Screen, and has had scenarios in the books; Terrors From Beyond, The San Francisco Guidebook, Houses of R'lyeh, Strange Aeons 2, Atomic Age Cthulhu, Island of Ignorance, Punktown, and Doors to Darkness. He is currently far too busy for any sane man.

  For more about Brian, you can find his infrequently updated webpage here: http://brian_sammons.webs.com or follow him on Twitter @BrianMSammons

  Glynn Owen Barrass lives in the North East of England and has been writing since late 2006. He has written over a hundred short stories, most of which have been published in the UK, USA, France, and Japan. He also co-edits anthologies for Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu fiction line, Eldritch Chrome (co-edited with Brian M. Sammons) being the first release this year, to be followed by Steampunk Cthulhu, Atomic Age Cthulhu, and more. He also writes material for their flagship roleplaying game: Call of Cthulhu.

  Details and news of his latest fiction appearances can be found on his website ‘Stranger Aeons: The Domain of Writer Glynn Barrass.’

  ABOUT THE ARTISTS

  Interior Illustrations

  M. Wayne Miller has become a well-known name in the field of horror illustration. Not to be limited, Wayne is equally adept with science fiction, fantasy, and young adult themes, welcoming the opportunities of each genre and, frequently, combining them all. His list of clients has grown long indeed, and Wayne intends to continue his quest to learn and grow as an artist and illustrator.

  Front Cover Artwork

  Vincent Chong is an award-winning freelance illustrator and designer. Since 2004 he has brought his creative vision and distinctive visual style to a wide range of projects from book and magazine covers to CD packaging and websites. He works for clients all around the world, and illustrates the works of renowned authors such as Stephen King. Vincent is the recipient of a World Fantasy Award, as well as receiving the British Fantasy Award for 'Best Artist’ on multiple occasions. He has also been shortlisted for Hugo and BSFA awards. In 2010 he released his first art book, Altered Visions: The Art of Vincent Chong. You can learn more about Vincent at his website, www.vincentchong-art.co.uk and blog, vincentchongart.wordpress.com.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Loyalty

  John Shirley won the Bram Stoker Award for his story collection Black Butterflies, and is the author of numerous novels, including the best-seller Demons, the cyberpunk classics City Come a-Walkin', Eclipse, And Black Glass, and his latest, new from Simon & Schuster, the urban fantasy novel Bleak History. He is a screenwriter, having written for television and movies; he was co-screenwriter of The Crow. He will be in Prime Books' The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror anthology, this year, and his story collection In Extremis: The Most Extreme Short Stories of John Shirley from Underland Press has been getting rave advance reviews. His novel Bioshock: Rapture, telling the story of the creation and undoing of Rapture, from the hit videogame Bioshock is about to come out from TOR books.

  The Game Changers

  Stephen Mark Rainey is not the infamous Stephen King antihero Mort Rainey, but the far more nefarious author of the novels Dark Shadows: Dreams of the Dark (with Elizabeth Massie, HarperCollins, 1999), Balak (Wildside Books, 2000), The Lebo Coven (Thomson Gale/Five Star Books, 2004), The Nightmare Frontier (Sarob Press, 2006, and in e-book format by Crossroads Press, 2010), and Blue Devil Island (Thomson Gale/Five Star Books, 2007); three short story collections; and over 80 published works of short fiction.

  White Feather

  T.E. Grau is an author of dark fiction whose work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Tales of Jack the Ripper, The Best of The Horror Society 2013, Dark Fusions: Where Monsters Lurk, World War Cthulhu, The Dark Rites of Cthulhu, Suction Cup Dreams: An Octopus Anthology, Dead But Dreaming 2, The Aklonomicon, Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities, and Horror for the Holidays, among others; and such magazines and literary journals as LA Weekly, The Fog Horn, Eschatology Jour
nal, and Lovecraft eZine. His two chapbooks, The Mission and The Lost Aklo Stories, will be published in early 2014 by Dunhams Manor Press. In the editorial realm, he currently serves as Fiction Editor of Strange Aeons magazine. T.E. Grau lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter, and can be found in the ether at The Cosmicomicon (cosmicomicon.blogspot.com).

  To Hold Ye White Husk

  Wilum Pugmire has written many books of Lovecraftian horror, including Gathered Dust and Others and Encounters With Enoch Coffin for DRP. His next book will be the short novel, The Revenant Of Rebecca Pascal, written in collaboration with David Barker and to be published as illustrated limited edition hardcover by Dark Renaissance Books this Spring. He will have stories in new anthologies such as Black Wings III and IX, Searchers After Horror, and A Mountain Walked. He dreams in Seattle.

  Sea Nymph’s Son

  Robert M. Price (Selma, NC), professor of scriptural studies at the Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary, is the editor (with Jeffery Jay Lowder) of The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave and the Journal of Higher Criticism. He is also the author of Top Secret: The Truth Behind Today's Pop Mysticisms; The Paperback Apocalypse: How the Christian Church Was Left Behind; The Reason-Driven Life: What Am I Here on Earth For? and many other works.

  The Boonieman

  Edward M. Erdelac is the author of the acclaimed Judeocentric/Lovecraftian weird western series Merkabah Rider, and the novels Buff Tea, Coyote's Trail, and Terovolas. His fiction has appeared in over a dozen anthologies and periodicals including most recently, Swords and Mythos, Kaiju Rising, After Death, Steampunk Cthulhu, The Dark Rites of Cthulhu, and Star Wars Insider. News of his works and other writings at http://emerdelac.wordpress.com

  The Turtle

  Neil Baker used to be a filmmaker and animator who occasionally dabbled in writing. Now he is a writer who does a bit of filmmaking on the side. Either way this doesn't bode well for his family's prospects.

  He has recently launched a new publishing house, April Moon Books, and their first publication, The Dark Rites of Cthulhu, will be out in April.

  The Bullet and the Flesh

  David Conyers is an Australian science fiction author and editor with over fifty short stories in various anthologies and magazines, many of which are collected in his e-books The Entropy Conflict, The Uncertainty Bridge and The Nightmare Dimension. David is the author of the Lovecraftian espionage science fiction series featuring his ongoing character, Major Harrison Peel, collected in The Impossible Object, The Weaponized Puzzle and The Eye of Infinity, with many more additions planned. He is the editor of the anthologies Extreme Planets, Undead & Unbound, Cthulhu’s Dark Cults and Cthulhu Unbound 3. David recently became the Art & General Editor of Ireland's Albedo One magazine.

  David Kernot is an Australian author living in the Mid North of South Australia and when he's not writing, he's riding his Harley Davidson through the wheat, wine, and wool farming lands. He writes contemporary fantasy, science fiction, and horror, and is the author of around forty published short stories in a variety of anthologies in Australia and the US, including The Year's Best Australian Fantasy & Horror, and Award Winning Australian Writing.

  Broadsword

  William Meikle is a Scottish writer with over a dozen novels published in the genre press and over 200 short story credits in thirteen countries. He is the author of the ongoing Midnight Eye series among others, and his work appears in a number of professional anthologies. His ebook The Invasion has been as high as #2 in the Kindle SF charts. He lives in a remote corner of Newfoundland with icebergs, whales and bald eagles for company. In the winters he gets warm vicariously through the lives of others in cyberspace, so please check him out at http://www.williammeikle.com

  Long Island Weird—The Lost Interviews

  Charles Christian is former barrister and Reuters correspondent turned award winning technology journalist, newsletter editor, blogger, publisher, poet, conference speaker, storyteller and science fiction author. ‘UrbanFantasist.com’ is his creative website and blog. His most recent collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories This is the Quickest Way Down was long-listed for three national and international book awards. He was also the founding editor of the widely read Ink Sweat & Tears poetry webzine and he has performed his one-man autobiographical monologue The Boy with the Bomb beneath his Bed at venues and festivals in the UK and United States.

  The Yoth Protocols

  Josh Reynolds is a professional freelance author whose credits include novels, short fiction and audio productions. As well as his own work, he has written for a number of popular media tie-in franchises, including Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 lines. He can be found online at http://joshuamreynolds.wordpress.com/.

  A Feast Of Death

  Lee Clark Zumpe is a reclusive author leading a life of obligatory asceticism in a two-bedroom, one-bath concrete-block cave-dwelling in the most densely-populated county of enigmatic and exotic Florida. He resides with his wife, his daughter and an embarrassingly extensive collection of Silver and Bronze Age comic books.

  Afflicted at an early age with a compulsion to compose intricate, engaging falsehoods, Zumpe began scrawling out fiction and poetry to stave off inevitable madness. His work has been seen in magazines such as Weird Tales, Space and Time and Dark Wisdom, and in anthologies including Horrors Beyond, Corpse Blossoms, High Seas Cthulhu and Cthulhu Unbound Vol. 1. Zumpe is rumored to have a doppelgänger who has assumed his identity and who currently masquerades as an award-winning entertainment columnist with Tampa Bay Newspapers.

  The Ithiliad

  Christine Morgan works the overnight shift in a psychiatric facility, which plays havoc with her sleep schedule but allows her a lot of writing time. A lifelong reader, she also reviews, beta-reads, occasionally edits and dabbles in self-publishing. Her other interests include gaming, history, superheroes, crafts, cheesy disaster movies and training to be a crazy cat lady. She can be found online at www.christine-morgan.org

  The Sinking City

  Konstantine Paradias is a jeweler by profession and a writer by choice. His short stories have been published in Unidentified Funny Objects! 2, Third FlatIron's Lost Worlds Anthology and the Battle Royale-Slam Book by Haikasoru. He is perfectly aware that he has a writing problem, but he can quit like, whenever he wants, man. His short story 'The Grim' has been nominated for a PushCart Prize and his comedic time travel piece, 'How You Runined Everything' is included in Tangent's 2013 Recommended Reading SF list.

  The Shape of a Snake

  Cody Goodfellow has written five novels and co-written three more with John Skipp. He received the Wonderland Book Award twice for his short fiction collections, Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars and All-Monster Action. He was a contributing editor at Substance, the world’s first CD-ROM zine, and cofounder of Perilous Press, a micropublisher of modern cosmic horror.

  Mysterious Ways

  CJ Henderson is the creator of both the Jack Hagee hardboiled PI series and the Teddy London supernatural detective series. He is also the author of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies, several score novels, plus hundreds of short stories and thousands of non-fiction pieces. In the wonderful world of comics he has written everything from Batman and the Punisher to Archie and Cherry Poptart.

  He also writes under the name Robert Morgan.

  Magna Mater

  Edward Morris is a 2011 nominee for the Pushcart Prize in Literature, also nominated for the 2009 Rhysling Award and the 2005 British Science Fiction Association Award. His work has appeared in over a hundred worldwide markets, including The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction, Robert M. Price's The Mountains of Madness, and Joseph Pulver's A Season in Carcosa. Morris lives and works in Portland, Oregon as a writer and bouncer.

  Dark Cell

  (See the “About the Editors” Section)

  Cold War, Yellow Fever

  Pete Rawlik's first professional sale was “On the Far Side of the Apocalypse” to the legendar
y magazine Talebones in 1997. Since then his work has appeared in Crypt of Cthulhu, Morpheus Tales, the Lovecraft Ezine, Innsmouth, and the anthologies Dead But Dreaming 2, Horror for the Holidays, Urban Cthulhu, and Worlds of Cthulhu. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Science Fiction and Tales of the Shadowmen, an annual anthology series focusing on heroes from French literature, comics and film. His first novel, Reanimators will appear in June 2013 from Night Shade Books.

  Stragglers from Carrhae

  Darrell Schweitzer is an American writer, editor, and essayist in the field of speculative fiction. Much of his focus has been on dark fantasy and horror, although he does also work in science fiction and fantasy.

  Schweitzer is also a prolific writer of literary criticism and editor of collections of essays on various writers within his preferred genres.

  The Procyon Project

  Tim Curran lives in Michigan and is the author of the novels Skin Medicine, Hive, Dead Sea, and Skull Moon. Upcoming projects include the novels Resurrection, The Devil Next Door, and Hive 2, as well as The Corpse King, a novella from Cemetery Dance, and Four Rode Out, a collection of four weird-western novellas by Curran, Tim Lebbon, Brian Keene, and Steve Vernon. His short stories have appeared in such magazines as City Slab, Flesh&Blood, Book of Dark Wisdom, and Inhuman, as well as anthologies such as Flesh Feast, Shivers IV, High Seas Cthulhu, and, Vile Things. Find him on the web at: www.corpseking.com