Re-Animated States of America

by Craig Mullins

  StrangeHouse Books

  P.O. Box 592

  Wood River, IL

  62095

  www.strangehousebooks.com

  Copyright © 2014 by Craig Mullins and Andrew Ozkenel

  Cover art Copyright © 2014 by Andrew Ozkenel and Jesse Wheeler

  Interior art Copyright © 2014 by Andrew Ozkenel

  All persons in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to any person, living or dead is purely coincidental or for the purposes of satire or parody. This is a work of fiction.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Printed in the USA.

  Strangehouse Books Catalog:

  Strange Sex: A Strange Anthology

  Robamapocalypse by Kevin Strange

  Tales of Questionable Taste by John Bruni (stories)

  Cotton Candy by Kevin Strange

  The Last Gig on Planet Earth by Kevin Strange (stories)

  Zombie! Zombie! Brain Bang! A Strange Anthology

  Vampire Guts in Nuke Town by Kevin Strange

  Strange Vs Lovecraft: A Strange Anthology

  McHumans by Kevin Strange

  Dinner at the Vomitropolis by Jesse Wheeler

  Alien Smut Peddlers from the Future by Kent Hill

  Damnation 101 by Kevin Sweeney

  A Very Strangehouse Christmas: A Strange Anthology

  The Humans Under the Bed by Kevin Strange

  Re-Animated States of America by Craig Mullins and Andrew Ozkenel (stories)

  Strange Fucking Stories: A Strange Anthology

  Hamsterdamned by Adam Millard

  Table of Contents

  Mind Over Madness

  Secondhand Flesh

  Our World Shall be Swept Clean from the Sky

  The Children of Doctor Kroh

  Blank Stares and Broken Dreams

  Vicious Jelly

  Sheet Metal Apocalypse

  The Key to What the Locksmith Saw

  The Ashen Valley of Reidr Skegg

  Turnbuckle Tango

  Death's Construction

  Through Eyes of Rot

  Dedication

  Craig

  Dedicated to Joe Mullins, my grandfather. I wish you could have read this...

  I think you would have liked it.

  Andrew

  Dedicated to my lovely wife, for if it wasn't for your patience, love and support, none of this would be possible.

  Acknowledgment

  Craig

  Anyone who has seen my short film READ ME A STORY, or more specifically the credits of said film, knows that I like to thank people... lots and lots of people. The special thanks in the film became affectionately known as the “thanks bomb” due to the sheer size of the thing (thanks to co-director Bret Mix for the name!). So in the interest of not boring you the reader, I will try not to do the same here.

  First off, I would like to thank my friends and family (you know who you are!) for all the support you have shown me over the years in all my various endeavors. Thanks to my parents for letting me be myself, even when it meant letting me do things most parents would have been afraid to. Your trust and support helped to mold me into the man I am today. Thanks to Kevin, Sean, Katie, and the rest of StrangeHouse Books for believing in me and for giving me this opportunity. Thanks to Don Noble, Kris Lugosi, Jeff Ö'Brien, Jesse Wheeler, Jason Wayne Allen, Jennifer McAllister, Kevin McDaniel, and Kelly Young for your support and friendship (and for reading everything I throw your way), and thanks to Kent Hill for the opportunity to work with a writer I admire not only for his style, but for his amazing taste in cinema!

  I would like to thank my beautiful wife Amie Mullins for her endless support over these many years, and for putting up with all of my crazy obsessions and the time it takes to pursue them. You are an amazing women, and I love you without end!

  I would also like to thank Steve Hergina for setting me on the path to creation through the endless movies, books, and bands we've shared over the last 30 years. I couldn't have asked for a better best friend!

  Last, but certainly not least, special thanks goes to my traveling companion and collaborator in this strange new world, Andrew Ozkenel. Thanks for believing in me as a writer, thanks for inspiring me with your art, and thanks for always having my back, even when it looked like I was getting lost. I couldn't have done any of this without you!

  Andrew

  I would like to thank Keyaira, Cash, Mom, Dad, Adam, Cody and Sky, Craig Mullins, Kevin McDaniel, Sherman Theaters Living Room art gallery and the whole Stroudsburg art scene!

  For in this new world even death...can...die

  -GWAR

  Mind Over Madness

  When the reanimated corpse sat up and gave Herbert West the finger, he knew his work here was done. Without a second thought, he put his revolver to its head and fired. The report issued from the gun was loud and echoed through the large, open space of the lab. Dr. West found that he was still started by the sound, even after hearing it almost daily since his return to the University.

  Dr. Herbert West went from being removed from the premises by force all those years ago, to having a wing named after him. All his transgressions forgiven, the new Dean of the University had set him up with the best equipment money could buy, and a fresh, seemingly endless supply of corpses. After that little incident with the President (and the mostly positive press it garnered), Dr. West had become somewhat of a celebrity, and Miskatonic University saw it as a way to inject new blood into the institution.

  Come learn from the great Dr. Herbert West, he who can cheat death...

  They overlooked the killings, the questionable resurrections (some of which it is said still roam the countryside on the outskirts of Arkham), and the god complex he had underwent when he started creating life out of mismatched parts... both human and not.

  He looked around his lab. To the left of him was a row of tables, each occupied by a corpse, either still dead or dead again, and beyond that, coffin freezers containing fresh volunteers, each of whom, it was said, died for the cause. To the right, a cityscape of beakers, test tubes, microscopes, wires and tubes arose on a plateau of tables the length of the wall. Everything he needed to cheat death was here, except his brain, which wandered elsewhere. It longed to be somewhere—anywhere—far away from prying eyes. Far away from the ignorant students who paid little attention to his lectures and teachings.

  Herbert was bored here... should he waste another corpse, another bullet? It was the University’s money, but he realized, almost as an afterthought, that it was his time. He really had done all he could do here, and he told himself it was time to move on... away from the safety that Miskatonic provided, away from the supplies, metal, glass, and flesh.

  He remembered the old days... he did some of his best work in the field, and in dank, musty basements with ill-gotten bodies and second-hand supplies.

  He needed some air. It was stuffy in here, and the windows had been nailed shut so the students wouldn't open them. The Dean didn't want the smell of death to permeate the campus. It was no secret what went on here, but god forbid anyone catch wind of it for real.

  He duffel bagged his notes and his fresh supply of reagent, holstered his gun, and made for the door.

  The great hall was empty (as it always was this late in the day), and his footsteps reverberated, giving the impression that he was being followed. He was not, though, and he knew it. He slowed, as he always did when he would approach one of the many disp
lays that lined the walls on either side of the hall, a light above each that showed its contents, but did little to illuminate that vastness of the hallway. Some of the displays were encased in glass, while others were exposed to the elements as they were when Miskatonic's archaeologists had discovered them...

  He rounded the corner into the great hall that led to the front doors of the University. Great chandeliers hung from the ceiling and gave the mile-long length of the hall the false impression of infinity. Doors on either side announced this class, or this teacher, but he ignored them all. He hadn't made friends (or even acquaintances) during his time here. He was always the nerdy, spectacled man who played with dead things, and the description suited him just fine.

  Often he thought of the day that it would be their cold corpses on his slab... but those thoughts will pass once he walks through the largest doors in all of Arkham.

  He stood there, a speck of a man, beneath the mighty front doors of Miskatonic University. They were as tall as giant oaks, and constructed from many. He grabbed the handles, and they slid open without a sound, as if they were oiled by magic. Dr. West was a scientist and had no time for magic, but he didn't doubt its existence; besides... weren’t magic, voodoo, and religion just another form of science? Science based on faith if not fact...

  Dr. Herbert West had seen things, created things, in his day that defied logic, defied reason, but even he was ill-prepared for what awaited him in this normally quiet corner of shadow-haunted Arkham.

  The sounds hit him before the sights—screams, cries for help, grunts and growls in the dark, and of course the sirens, so many sirens that the many became one, a long, high-pitched drone that could only drive one mad if forced to listen to it long enough.

  Then came the sights, which mirrored on his glasses like small projection tubes showing only madness and chaos...

  The night was blinding as fires raged in the distance, and the night sky shined like a luminous white blanket, the stars black pin-pricks that emitted dark tendrils of gases that reached beyond the heavens.

  An elderly woman—a teacher perhaps, or a secretary—dragged herself, naked and bleeding, across the pristine front lawn of Miskatonic University. Herbert watched from the front steps as her lower half stayed behind, revealing a ruptured gorge of mangled flesh and an explosion of bloody tentacles that snaked along behind her.

  She made not a sound, but her face was contorted into a silent scream, mixed with a look of surprise.

  Whatever had happened—was still happening—was sudden. He had heard nothing from inside the University, but the walls were thick, and he had heard that the magic only let in what it wished.

  His duffel bag was securely around his shoulder, his notes and reagent safe. There was safety inside, but wonderment and discovery out here, and his scientific mind told him there really was no question of what they should do... so Herbert West left behind his lab, his students, and his life, and walked into the unknown.

  *****

  A car came out of nowhere and mounted the sidewalk, smashing into a tree mere feet from where Herbert stood. The thing behind the wheel had hints of humanity, but whatever it was becoming was doing its best to drive those hints from the corpse, which now slumped in the seat, its neck broken, and bent at an impossible angle.

  The sky about him continued to invert itself, and gave the world around him an eerie black & white quality that made the things he saw look artificial, like poorly conceived late-night television. Mobs of people ran past, and paid him no mind, as packs of things gave chase. The ones that fell behind got eaten, the ones that didn't were no doubt eaten later.

  Herbert West was mesmerized by the sights and sounds around him, his mind reeling as he tried to take it all in. He didn't want to miss a thing, and caught himself spinning in place over and over, trying to see all around him.

  There were madness-induced riots in the streets of Arkham, and Herbert West couldn't have felt more alive.

  The sky darkened, and he awaited the change, but it was only a flock of twin-winged birds the likes of which this world had never seen. Herbert was reminded of organic biplanes, and watched as they flew off into the bright.

  He had barely left the confines of the fenced-in property surrounding Miskatonic, and he had already seen enough to fill journals and confound the greatest minds.

  Was this happening everywhere, he wondered? Arkham has had its share of weird occurrences in the past, its share of monsters and madmen, but nothing on this scale, nothing that couldn't be hushed by money or death.

  No, this was on a grand scale befitting the end of the world itself.

  Buildings to the left of him toppled and became ruins as a creature the size of a large hill hopped into view. Its skin was covered in warts, scales, and rent flesh, the exposed beams of the building tearing into it with ease. It seemed not to notice as it continued on its way, until it hit a low-hanging power line and burst into flame, the skin dripping off and huge slabs of oily blubber boiling to the surface. It dropped where it stood, and burned.

  A pack of domesticated dogs was the first thing that Herbert saw that was noticeably aware of his existence, so when they came sniffing about, he decided to move on.

  He decided he would follow Church Street to Hangman's Hill and to the graveyard beyond that (which was, of course, one of his old haunts), and made his way into a world with no shadows...

  Things moved all around him: trees, buildings, creatures, and survivors. Few of these movements proved natural, as trees bounded away from him, buildings lifted from the ground and hovered inches from it, creatures that defied what this world thought normal moved in ways that could not propel paper on the wind, and people changed, oh how they changed, and their cries for help changed with them to shrieks that unseated glass from the very windows they inhabited.

  Just outside West Church, the ground gave way and he saw the world's spine—or what looked like several hundred feet of it—as a giant centipede wormed its way beneath the loose Earth and fractured asphalt. The thing rose and fell like a whale in the sea, then finally disappeared beneath the churchyard. He could still feel it moving beneath him and feared that it might rise up and consume him like a shark from the deep, dark depths.

  He tried to move, but his feet were stuck fast in something that looked like mud, but was indeed yet another creature to add to this growing zoological menagerie. The thing had bubbled up from the destruction left behind by the spine-ipede, and was even now rising to his ankles. He looked at it, as it looked back at him. Its eyes (which were many) rolled around in the growing puddle of its own putrid flesh, and when they came to rest, he noticed that they were always pupil-up.

  With one last tug, he pulled his booted feet free of the mess of flesh, and crossed over to the entrance of Hangman's Hill.

  A half-dozen police cars, their sirens silenced, sat in a semicircle outside the gated entrance of the cemetery, the officers who drove them lying dead all around.

  Herbert thought that he might be mistaken, as out of the corner of his eye he saw movement, but upon further inspection he saw that it was only a mass of fleshy stalks that had sprouted from a man's gut like seedlings from a dry riverbed, and he began to check the others.

  A female officer, still sitting in her squad car, moved her head, the radio still in her hand, so Herbert walked over to her, and lay a hand on her shoulder. She raised her head and turned to look at him, but her face—and indeed most of her torso—was hollowed out and being nested in by the creature that wore her like a suit. It hissed in his direction, confirming at least that he could be seen (he made a mental note of this), and then lowered her head and disappeared within the folds of her skin.

  The inverted sky had finally faded to black almost completely, but the stars themselves stayed dark, and disappeared into the darkened canopy of nothingness.

  So, guided by the city’s many fires, Herbert entered Hangman's Hill and left the chaos behind him.

  *****

  There
was a great deal of commotion in the cemetery proper, and Herbert hung back, the sheer numbers of what lay ahead keeping his curiosity at bay.

  Cultists, of which Arkham had many, had gathered here to no doubt celebrate the coming of whatever god they nightly failed to summon, or congratulate each other on finally bringing about the end of all mankind (which they also failed to realize they were a part of).

  They stood in a large circle, the remainder of their numbers standing in increasingly smaller circles, their red-robed leader in the center, their cheers and commotion drowning out anything he might have said.

  Herbert listened, but failed to understand what was going on, beyond the visible, so he decided to use their exuberance as a mask to allow him a closer look.

  He could see that the red-robed leader held an open book, and read from it, his voice more of a croak than a whisper. Herbert wasn't sure that he would have been able to understand him even in silence, but still he strained his ear and mind.

  It had been lost on him that even in this new darkness, he could see the proceedings with some ease, and he looked around for the source of light, which he now saw as a glowing, swirling mist in the sky far above the proceedings.

  The circles of robed figures (of which there were four) began to chant, a low hum that, due to their sheer numbers, caused a barely perceptible vibration to the ground around them. Herbert could feel it where he stood, which was some distance away.

  The leader joined in, and raised the book above his head and pointed it, open pages to the sky.

  The swirling mists that lit the scene intensified, and the glow took on an unearthly hue. The chant of the cultists fought the howling winds. The pages of the book whipped about and it threatened to fly away, and with one last command, the cultists stopped, and turned their heads skyward.