“Just a moment, sir.” More listening: these guys cock their heads to one side as they take instruction, birds of prey scanning the horizon for Mukhabaratets. “Delta four coming in. Over. You’re clear to go along the tunnel now, sir. This way.”
“What’s happening?” Roger demands as he lets himself be hustled into the corridor, along to the end and round a sharp corner. Numb shock takes hold: he keeps putting one foot in front of the other.
“We’re now at Defcon one, sir. You’re down on the special list as part of the house staff. Next door on the left, sir.”
The queue in the dim-lit basement room is moving fast, white-gloved guards with clipboards checking off men and a few women in suits as they step through a steel blast door one by one and disappear from view. Roger looks round in bewilderment: he sees a familiar face. “Fawn! What’s going on?”
The secretary looks puzzled. “I don’t know. Roger? I thought you were testifying today.”
“So did I.” They’re at the door. “What else?”
“Ronnie was making a big speech in Helsinki; the colonel had me record it in his office. Something about not coexisting with the empire of evil. He cracked some kinda joke about how we start bombing in fifteen minutes, Then this—”
They’re at the door. It opens on a steel-walled airlock and the marine guard is taking their badges and hustling them inside. Two staff types and a middle-aged brigadier join them and the door thumps shut. The background noise vanishes, Roger’s ears pop, then the inner door opens and another marine guard waves them through into the receiving hall.
“Where are we?” asks the big-haired secretary, staring around.
“Welcome to XK-Masada,” says Roger. Then his childhood horrors catch up with him and he goes in search of a toilet to throw up in.
We need you back
Roger spends the next week in a state of numbed shock. His apartment here is like a small hotel room—a hotel with security, air conditioning, and windows that only open onto an interior atrium. He pays little attention to his surroundings. It’s not as if he has a home to return to.
Roger stops shaving. Stops changing his socks. Stops looking in mirrors or combing his hair. He smokes a lot, orders cheap bourbon from the commissary, and drinks himself into an amensic stupor each night. He is, frankly, a mess. Self-destructive. Everything disintegrated under him at once: his job, the people he held in high regard, his family, his life. All the time he can’t get one thing out of his head: the expression on Gorman’s face as he stands there, in front of the submarine, rotting from the inside out with radiation sickness, dead and not yet knowing it. It’s why he’s stopped looking in mirrors.
On the fourth day he’s slumped in a chair watching taped I Love Lucy re-runs on the boob tube when the door to his suite opens quietly. Someone comes in. He doesn’t look round until the colonel walks across the screen and unplugs the TV set at the wall, then sits down in the chair next to him. The colonel has bags of dark skin under his eyes; his jacket is rumpled and his collar is unbuttoned.
“You’ve got to stop this, Roger,” he says quietly. “You look like shit.”
“Yeah, well. You too.”
The colonel passes him a slim manilla folder. Without wanting to, Roger slides out the single sheet of paper within.
“So it was them.”
“Yeah.” A moment’s silence. “For what it’s worth, we haven’t lost yet. We may yet pull your wife and son out alive. Or be able to go back home.”
“Your family too, I suppose.” Roger’s touched by the colonel’s consideration, the pious hope that Andrea and Jason will be alright, even through his shell of misery. He realises his glass is empty. Instead of re-filling it he puts it down on the carpet beside his feet. “Why?”
The colonel removes the sheet of paper from his numb fingers. “Probably someone spotted you in the King David and traced you back to us. The Mukhabarat had agents everywhere, and if they were in league with the KGB... ” he shrugs. “Things escallated rapidly. Then the president cracked that joke over a hot mike that was supposed to be switched off... Have you been checking in with the desk summaries this week?”
Roger looks at him blankly. “Should I?”
“Oh, things are still happening.” The colonel leans back and stretches his feet out. “From what we can tell of the situation on the other side, not everyone’s dead yet. Ligachev’s screaming blue murder over the hotline, accusing us of genocide: but he’s still talking. Europe is a mess and nobody knows what’s going on in the middle east—even the Blackbirds aren’t making it back out again.”
“The thing at Takrit.”
“Yeah. It’s bad news, Roger. We need you back.”
“Bad news?”
“The worst.” The colonel jams his hands between his knees, stares at the floor like a bashful child. “Saddam Hussein al-Takriti spent years trying to get his hands on elder technology. It looks like he finally succeeded in stabilising the gate into Sothoth. Whole villages disappeared, Marsh Arabs, wiped out in the swamps of Eastern Iraq. Reports of yellow rain, people’s skin melting right off their bones. The Iranians got itchy and finally went nuclear. Trouble is, they did so two hours before that speech. Some asshole in Plotsk launched half the Uralskoye SS-20 grid—they went to launch on warning eight months ago—burning south, praise Jesus. Scratch the middle east, period—everything from the Nile to the Khyber Pass is toast. We’re still waiting for the callback on Moscow, but SAC has put the whole Peacemaker force on airborn alert. So far we’ve lost the eastern seaboard as far south as North Virginia and they’ve lost the Donbass basin and Vladivostok. Things are a mess; nobody can even agree whether we’re fighting the commies or something else. But the box at Chernobyl—Project Koschei—the doors are open, Roger. We orbited a Keyhole-Eleven over it and there are tracks, leading west. The PLUTO strike didn’t stop it—and nobody knows what the fuck is going on in WarPac country. Or France, or Germany, or Japan, or England.”
The colonel makes a grab for Roger’s wild turkey, rubs the neck clean and swallows from the bottle. He looks at Roger with a wild expression on his face. “Koschei is loose, Roger. They fucking woke the thing. And now they can’t control it. Can you believe that?”
“I can believe that.”
“I want you back behind a desk tomorrow morning, Roger. We need to know what this Thulu creature is capable of. We need to know what to do to stop it. Forget Iraq; Iraq is a smoking hole in the map. But K-Thulu is heading towards the Atlantic coast. What are we going to do if it doesn’t stop?”
Masada
The city of XK-Masada sprouts like a vast mushroom, a mile-wide dome emerging from the top of a cold plateau on a dry planet that orbits a dying star. The jagged black shapes of F-117’s howl across the empty skies outside it at dusk and dawn, patrolling the threatening emptiness that stretches as far as the mind can imagine.
Shadows move in the streets of the city, hollowed out human shells in uniform. They rustle around the feet of the towering concrete blocks like the dry leaves of autumn, obsessively focussed on the tasks that lend structure to their remaining days. Above them tower masts of steel, propping up the huge geodesic dome that arches across the sky: blocking out the hostile, alien constellations, protecting frail humanity from the dust storms that periodically scour the bones of the ancient world. The gravity here is a little lighter, the night sky whorled and marbled by the diaphanous sheets of gas blasted off the dying star that lights their days. During the long winter nights, a flurry of carbon dioxide snow dusts the surface of the dome: but the air is bone-dry, the city slaking its thirst on subterranean aquifers.
This planet was once alive—there is still a scummy sea of algae near the equator that feeds oxygen into the atmosphere, and there is a range of volcanoes near the north pole that speaks of plate tectonics in motion—but it is visibly dying. There is a lot of history here, but no future.
Sometimes, in the early hours when he cannot sleep, Roger walks outside the city,
along the edge of the dry plateau. Machines labour on behind him, keeping the city tenuously intact: he pays them little attention. There is talk of mounting an expedition to Earth one of these years, to salvage whatever is left before the searing winds of time erase them forever. Roger doesn’t like to think about that. He tries to avoid thinking about Earth as much as possible: except when he cannot sleep but walks along the cliff top, prodding at memories of Andrea and Jason and his parents and sister and relatives and friends, each of them as painful as the socket of a missing tooth. He has a mouthful of emptiness, bitter and acheing, out here on the edge of the plateau.
Sometimes Roger thinks he’s the last human being alive. He works in an office, feverishly trying to sort out what went wrong: and bodies move around him, talking, eating in the canteen, sometimes talking to him and waiting as if they expect a dialogue. There are bodies here, men and some women chatting, civilian and some military—but no people. One of the bodies, an army surgeon, told him he’s suffering from a common stress disorder, survivor’s guilt. This may be so, Roger admits, but it doesn’t change anything. Soulless days follow sleepless nights into oblivion, dust trickling over the side of the cliff like sand into the un-dug graves of his family.
A narrow path runs along the side of the plateau, just downhill from the foundations of the city power plant where huge apertures belch air warmed by the radiators of the nuclear reactor. Roger follows the path, gravel and sandy rock crunching under his worn shoes. Foreign stars twinkle overhead, forming unrecognizable patterns that tell him he’s far from home. The trail drops away from the top of the plateau, until the city is an unseen shadow looming above and behind his shoulder. To his right is a dizzying panorama, the huge rift valley with its ancient city of the dead stretched out before him. Beyond it rise alien mountains, their peaks as high and airless as the dead volcanoes of Mars.
About half a mile away from the dome, the trail circles an outcrop of rock and takes a downhill switchback turn. Roger stops at the bend and looks out across the desert at his feet. He sits down, leans against the rough cliff face and stretches his legs out across the path, so that his feet dangle over nothingness. Far below him, the dead valley is furrowed with rectangular depressions; once, millions of years ago, they might have been fields, but nothing like that survives to this date. They’re just dead, like everyone else on this world. Like Roger.
In his shirt pocket, a crumpled, precious pack of cigarettes. He pulls a white cylinder out with shaking fingers, sniffs at it, then flicks his lighter under it. Scarcity has forced him to cut back: he coughs at the first lungful of stale smoke, a harsh, racking croak. The irony of being saved from lung cancer by a world war is not lost on him.
He blows smoke out, a tenuous trail streaming across the cliff. “Why me?” he asks quietly.
The emptiness takes its time answering. When it does, it speaks with the Colonel’s voice. “You know the reason.”
“I didn’t want to do it,” he hears himself saying. “I didn’t want to leave them behind.”
The Ghoulish Wife
by Kevin L. O’Brien
In the city of Cairnsford, in the state of Colorado, during the tenure of Gov. Roy Romer, there lived an entrepreneur who - through a great deal of hard work and dedication during his youth - had amassed a considerable fortune by the time he was thirty-five. By name Sidney Hardon, he unfortunately had no family, because his fiancee had died the night before their wedding day. Sidney Hardon had known her all his childhood, and the grief of her loss weighed heavily on his heart, so that to assuage his grief he had devoted himself entirely to business. Now, however, that weight had eased somewhat with the passing years, and he began to consider his future. With wealth enough and property to secure him for the rest of his life, he decided that it was time to seek a new bride, so that he may have children to pass his fortune on to when he finally died.
In that same city was a house that was shunned by all, because the property on which it sat bordered the cemetery. This burial ground had an evil reputation as being darkly haunted, so no one would occupy the house. One day, however, a young woman named Amina Nadil, whom it was said had been married to a celebrity from whom she had just become divorced, took the house and moved in. Though seldom seen during the day, she was often heard singing in the garden at night. Those who heard her voice claimed it sounded like that of an angel; those who saw her through the windows of her home or on
one of her rare trips into town remarked that her dark beauty was greater than that of any woman in Cairnsford.
When Sidney Hardon heard of this he resolved to meet her. So one night he left his house and drove the darkened streets of Cairnsford, until he came to her home. He parked in the shadows on the street and waited until he heard her voice. It was of such enchanting sweetness, and rendered with such great skill and tenderness certain love songs, that he felt an overwhelming desire to see her. Heedless to caution, he left his car, scaled the wall surrounding her property, and followed the sound of her voice. There, in the moonlight, he saw her. Amina Nadil was bathing in a spa, lit by a half-dozen decorative garden torches surrounding one side of an ornate stone patio. On the opposite had been erected an artificial cliff-face, from which a waterfall tumbled into the pool. Even as he watched, she rose and stood beneath the cascade, allowing the water to flow over her statuesque body. Unconscious of her audience, she continued her singing, and her mesmerizing voice fascinated him as much as her dazzling physical charms. In that moment he fell in love with her, and vowed to make her his own.
He slipped away noiselessly and returned to his house to make plans. The next day he sent his majordomo to her home with a gift of flowers. Each day afterwards he sent her more gifts: gourmet chocolates, fine wines, perfumes, expensive clothing, and jewelry. Amina Nadil received them all warmly, and finally invited Sidney Hardon to visit her. He did so, and spent most of the day with her. Before he left he asked for her hand in marriage and she accepted. They were wed amid much splendor within the week, and he and his household moved into her home.
Several days passed in extreme happiness before Sidney Hardon became aware of a peculiarity in his wife's habits. Amina Nadil was extremely diligent in overseeing the preparation of each evening meal, and she sat with him as he ate, but she would only eat a dish of rice one grain at a time, and instead of partaking of the other dishes she only took a single slice of bread, which she also ate one small piece at a time. When he asked her about this, she excused herself by saying that her family were members of an austere religion, and while she no longer practiced its esoteric rites, she continued to live the somewhat frugal and severe lifestyle it imposed out of long habit.
Sidney Hardon accepted her explanation and thought no more of the matter, so it was a few weeks more before he noted another oddity. One night he awoke from a deep sleep to find that he was alone in their bed. At first he wasn't surprised, but he grew anxious as substantial time went by and she did not return. At first he feared for her safety, but then he feared she was perhaps being unfaithful. By the time Amina Nadil returned shortly before dawn, he had decided to solve this mystery, so instead of confronting her he pretended to be fast asleep. The following night he pretended to close his eyes, but all the while he carefully watched his wife's activities. After a short time, when she believed herself unobserved, she rose from the bed, threw a long dark robe over her shoulders, and silently slipped out of the room.
Sidney Hardon flew out of the bed, hastily dressed, and followed her as closely as he dared. To his surprise she crossed the garden to the farthest corner of the property, where the cemetery fence formed part of the border. Parting a clump of bushes, she passed through a hole in the fence made by the bars having been pulled apart, and entered the cemetery. Pursuing her very carefully he watched as she entered a large vault. He approached with extreme caution and peered inside. The interior was dimly lit by three funerary lamps, and to his horror he saw his young and beautiful wife surrounded by a group of hideo
us creatures.
They were of such surpassing monstrousness as he had never seen before. Though they had the vague form of man, their faces were like those of dogs, with long. broad snouts and low, pointed ears. They were hairless except for scraggly patches on their digitigradal legs, but their obscenely rubbery, deeply tannic skin was covered with mold and patches of lichens. Their arms were long and powerfully muscled, and their broad hands had long, dexterous fingers, each of which terminated in a great claw. But their feet were cloven, like a pig's, and they danced about like grotesque satyrs celebrating some macabre bacchanalian rite.
Rather than attack her, however, they each embraced her as if she was an old friend. She then seated herself at the head of a sarcophagus lid set upon two piles of stacked tombstones. One of the monsters carried in a corpse which had been buried that very day and tossed it without respect onto the grisly table. The ghouls - for that was what they were - then joined her in quickly tearing the body to pieces, devouring the various parts with exceeding gusto and satisfaction. He became sick with terror and revulsion as Amina Nadil greedily stripped the flesh from an upper arm, then bit through the bone to suck out the marrow. The sight of her lips, which he kissed each night, and her hands, that caressed him, smeared with gore turned his burning love to a smoldering hate. Had he been armed he would have tried then and there to kill her and as many of her company as he could.
Instead, fearing that he might be discovered, he escaped back to the house and their bed, and when his wife returned he pretended to be deep in sleep until the morning. Throughout the whole of that day he made no mention of what he had discovered, but in the evening as Amina Nadil took her customary bowl of rice, Sidney Hardon insisted that she should share some the same foods he ate. When she declined as he expected, he remarked with all the sarcasm and disgust he could manage: "I take it then that none of these dishes are as palatable as the flesh of a corpse?"
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