The trees held back the snow, so they made decent time; and finally, when they began to thin out, then stop altogether, they started looking for someplace along the edge of the woods to make camp. The snow was heavy and, like everything else, it had changed as well. Flakes as large as a man’s eye hampered their visibility. The snow was a dirty white veined with rust, and the wind picked it up in large quantities and blew it across the ground. At the far end of the clearing, just beyond the edge of the woods, lay a valley that caught their attention. It was ringed with snow-covered rocks, some the size of small hills, but the valley could be seen through an opening not far from their campsite. Herbert West decided to take a look before they set up for the night, just to make sure creatures didn’t lurk beyond their sight, waiting for them to close their eyes for the night.
The setting sun encased the valley in darkness, but when their eyes adjusted to the fading sunlight, they looked out over the raped landscape, which looked to them like two cupped hands, its skin peeling and flaking away. And what they saw nestled in the palms of those hands was an outpost of immense scope, comprised of long but simple buildings a full forty feet high or more, a viscous mist roiling and rolling beyond them.
They soon realized that it wasn’t the setting sun or already risen moon that lit their sight, but an unearthly blaze that scorched the land beyond the encampment, just before the boiling mists.
“We must leave, Jehovah. No questions. We must move now,” Herbert said sternly.He turned to see Jehovah cupped in a very large hand, three feet from fingertip to the base of the palm. The owner of that hand was half covered in snow, half in shadow, and before Herbert could say another word, he was fully covered in darkness.
When he came to, he could tell he was slung over someone’s back and moving. He could feel cold metal beneath the bag he was in, and feel the muscles beneath that metal ripple with every step. A few minutes later, he was dropped to the ground, and could feel that one side of the bag was getting uncomfortably hot; so much so that he rolled himself over to the far side of the rather spacious bag to distance himself from the heat. It was obvious that he—for he had no idea if Jehovah was still alive—had been carried to the encampment and was lying near the fire. The inside of the bag smelled of dampness and mold, and was made from the hide of some hairy beast that must have been very large, because it was constructed from a single piece. The familiar glow of his re-agent was little comfort as he listened to the chaos outside his prison.
He needed to see what was going on outside, so he began cutting at the bag with the same knife he used to relieve the worm of its flesh. It was hard going, but once he made a hole, it tore along a natural seam easily enough.
The outpost consisted of enormous huts built from tusks (mammoth, but how could that be?) and stretched animal skins. Tattered banners and shredded flags waved in the night winds; the poles they adorned rose sixty feet in the air.
He tried not to stare into the fire, but its presence demanded his attention. Upon the fire lay the sixth and final tube worm that had not come out of hiding. Only a Marauder could have opened and closed one of the silos so easily, he thought to himself.
He then saw his first Marauder (the butcher, he presumed, if he could be given such a formal title). His clothing, made from the sewn together faces of his victims, was drenched in blood and worse, and his head was covered in a hood with no visible hole in it. He removed a blade from his belt so sharp it could slice light and removed a strip of flesh from the tube worm’s side. He pulled back the hood, raised the meat to his lips and ran his tongue over it, then swallowed it down. After doing so, he lowered the hood again and walked out of Herbert’s line of sight.
Herbert continued to work at the hole, and soon made it large enough that he could shimmy his way out; but where would he go? He couldn’t leave without Jehovah. He had brought him into this world, and he wasn’t about to leave him for dead.
He crawled on his elbows and knees until the shadow of one of the immense huts hid him from the light and surveyed his surroundings further. Beyond the outpost, unnaturally large woolly rhinos, oxen, and bison roamed the plains just at the edge of the wall of mist. The rhinos had specialized horns, downturned like a cow catcher on a train. They, the largest of the beasts, were also fitted with harnesses to be used for pulling several gigantic battering rams and catapults that rolled on stone wheels. The weapons looked to have been well put to use, and Herbert wondered what cities had fallen under their might.
He returned his gaze to the fire, the heart of the camp, and saw a row of small bodies—some human, some animal, and some indescribable—that lay steaming on a hot rock. A large Marauder—twenty-five feet tall and covered in armor that resembled broken chunks of tortoise shell—plucked the head off something rail-thin and multi-limbed and threw it into the fire. It made a hiss like bubbling fat, then flamed out. The Marauder picked up the headless corpse with a mangled hand, two fingers and a thumb attached to ground meat, and swallowed it.
It was difficult to see beyond the fire because it consumed so much of the landscape, but he peered beyond it and into the spectral mist that shrouded the back of the valley. Large figures congealed within it, at first only a shimmering shadow, then, as they moved closer, solid figures. The Marauders are coming from there, he thought. The landscape “inside” the mist was forbidden to him, but he could swear he heard the sea.
If more of those things were coming, he had to act fast. He scanned the immediate area and saw several more bags. One of them had to contain Jehovah, but his optimism waned, as none of them seemed to be moving. Further to the other side of the camp he saw two more figures: one chained to a large rock, the other roasting on a spit. The unfortunate on the spit was a fifteen-foot-long (or from the look of his musculature, tall) pig-man, stripped naked and cooking, his eyes sightless glass balls of pain and agony. The other chained captive was the pig-man’s equal in size, but his eyes burned with hatred and revenge. His body was outfitted with metal plate armor, fitted and planed, not makeshift and piecemeal like that of the Marauders; a boar fully ready to wage war on them, if only he could break out of his bondage.
Several more Marauders were moving around the fire. Herbert West felt insignificant in their presence, all of them twenty feet tall or more, the tallest of them towers of ruthless savagery. The butcher had taken to task the cutting of the pig-man, and removed a chunk of the creature’s leg. It wasn’t given to one of the Marauders, however; it was thrown into the shadows, where the sound of gnashing teeth and growling could be heard.
Herbert knew he had several needles of re-agent in his pocket (and more bottles if needed), and now he had a plan in his head. If only he could make it across the camp unnoticed.
He could wait no more, so he backed around the building he had been hiding behind and moved off into the shadows of the moon. The buildings were so large that it took him a great deal of time to round the other end, but once he did, he saw that he had a relatively clear path to his destination on the other side. He ran without incident to another building, then behind it, all under the moon’s watchful eye, then came out from behind it.
A voice boomed, like a mighty thunder clap, and Herbert almost died where he stood.
“You! You dare cross our lands?” it said. “Then you shall pay for your transgressions.”
Herbert said nothing, but stood looking into the darkness from which the voice crawled. A torch ignited, like gas thrown into a fire, and he saw the source. Upon a throne made from the husks of automobiles, bones and animal skins sat the largest Marauder he had seen. It rested its feet on a pile of skulls, pulverizing many with little effort.
The Marauder’s beard hung in abundance, the hair woven through human skulls like beads. His head was a hideous collection of horns, tusks and earth. Worms worked their way under his skin as he talked, but he didn’t seem to notice. His shoulders were spiked faces, his legs armored with rust. In his hand was the fractured skull cap of another Marauder, which he
used as a vessel for some unknown drink. He raised it to his lips and drank, then threw it with some velocity towards the fire. The flames danced like ghouls in the moonlight.
To one side of the throne, death in the form of a blood-splattered creature—almost human, but evolved into something a little more—seemed to scream silently from a wooden stake, like some grotesque barbershop pole.
To the other side, a man who was a dozen feet tall hung limply from a cross, large finger bones impaled into his skull like a thorny crown.
“We come here from Ginnungagap, where no man has returned, and our beasts gnaw on the bones of Gods!” the Marauder growled.
“My warriors wear the skin of the Old Ones, and soon we will feast!” he continued. “We will feed on the War Boar, and its strength will be added to our own.”
The butcher removed another pound of flesh from the pig-man and threw it towards the growling beasts. One of them came out of the shadows, and its revelation was nightmarish: A massive hound with teeth that could rend armor, its body built for battle. Its fur was black, its eyes blacker. Its body was covered in almost invisible protrusions, not unlike thorns on a rose, which faced forward, ready to eviscerate anyone who tried to stop it.
“You shall be food for our dread hounds, then shit for our fire,” the Marauder said, and began to stand from his throne.
During this time, few of the amassing Marauders paid him any attention, which didn’t go unnoticed by Dr. West. Two of the dread hounds were up and sniffing for food, but the fire was too intense for them to eat from the pig-man, so they started towards the War Boar, who began pulling at his chains and snorting, steam rising from his face.
Herbert West took this opportunity to run, and as he rounded the fire, he grabbed the closest bag he found. Once on the other side, he emptied the bag of its contents: something akin to an alligator with a snake-like neck and flippers. He heard the large Marauder booming orders, the dread hounds attacking, and the boar screaming.
He got into the bag, then stood up. Several holes had been made in it by the creature before it died, and that aided in Herbert’s plan. The bag was getting hot, but it helped shield the heat as he neared the pig-man, still roasting on the spit. He removed several syringes, then filled them to capacity. Pushing his hands through holes in the bag, he braved the flames and injected the pig-man with enough re-agent to bring back an army. His skin began to blister, so he backed off, the syringes still stuck in the pig-man’s side. He slid out of the bag and moved along the backside of the fire. He looked toward the mist, and saw that more Marauders were forming there.
As he came around the end of the fire, the flames erupted as the pig-man—fueled by the re-agent—stood, still in the middle of the flames, the pole still protruding from its charred body.
The dread hounds ceased torturing the War Boar, and the large Marauder roared orders to his army, but they weren’t prepared for the death rage of the re-animated corpse.
The pig-man stepped from the fire, its body ablaze, and started swinging the pole towards anything that moved. One of the dread hounds launched itself at the pig-man and was speared for its trouble, its lifeless body tossed to the side as the pig-man continued its rampage.
Behind the Marauders, the War Boar had freed itself and was in the midst of extinguishing the other dread hound, its head crushed by repeated blows from the boar’s metal gauntlets.
The Marauders split, some taking on the pig-man, the others attacking the boar.
Herbert started picking through the bags (of which there weren’t many) and finally found Jehovah in a lifeless heap. He grabbed his friend and ran towards the buildings and the safety of the shadows. Once in the shadow, he shook Jehovah, who opened one eye and looked around.
“What’s going on, Herbert?” he said. “The last thing I remember was getting grabbed, then waking up in some bag. It was so hot in there, I must have passed out.”
He looked around, and for the first time witnessed the war around him.
Both the pig-man and War Boar were in full attack, and for all their brave words, the Marauders seemed outclassed. The pig-man swung its head, the metal pole protruding from its mouth making a wide arc. A Marauder countered by thrusting his axe, and they connected in a spray of sparks. The force of the blow was mighty, and it sent the axe down the length of pole and into the creature's face, splitting it in half. The two halves curled back, exposing its blood-filled nasal cavity and emptying brain pan, but still, with the help of Herbert West's re-agent, it fought on.
The War Boar had relieved a Marauder of its sword, and was now relieving several others of their insides. Its armor was taking abuse, but had thus far held, its fury pouring from its nostrils. A fallen Marauder reached out with his sword, but his skull was crushed by the boar’s hooves. It continued on, death behind it, until it was felled by a well-placed thrust of the large Marauder’s spear. As its body lay steaming, a pack of dread hounds moved in, their teeth crunching on metal and bone alike.
The pig-man’s path of destruction was no less impressive, but its half-eaten leg could no longer support the weight of it, and it went down, the rush of air causing the fire to burst into a cloud of burning debris. It rose up on its arms and crawled forward, spearing a Marauder along its path. Another Marauder tried to sever its head just behind its split visage, but the metal pole kept him from succeeding.
Jehovah and Herbert West had begun their escape under the confusion of battle, and were halfway up the valley when they heard a scream that caused them both to turn.
The large Marauder unsheathed his sword and lunged, the pig-man jumping in retaliation. They met in a wreck of flesh and metal, and the Marauder’s face was caved in, his war helm impaled on the pole. A half-dozen Marauders, fresh from the mist, joined the fray, and hacked the pig-man to pieces as he lay, its face stuck to the face of their dead leader.
Herbert and Jehovah turned and continued through the snow, which was all but absent from the camp but piling high the further they got from it.
As they mounted the rise, then moved through the gap in the stones, Herbert looked to see the Marauders standing around their dead leader burning in the now-intense funeral pyre, then one by one they turned and disappeared into the mist.
Hours and miles later, Herbert and Jehovah stopped to rest. Herbert because he wanted to, Jehovah because he had to.
“Herbert, did you hear that sound a ways back?” Jehovah asked. “It sounded like metal footsteps.
“Do you think one of those things followed us?” he continued.
“Yes, I heard it; and no, I don’t think it was one of them,” Herbert replied.
Soon the metal footfalls gave way to an occasional “whoosh”, and Herbert West decided that he must find out the source, so they stopped, built a fire, and he left Jehovah to look for more wood.
“I hate you,” he heard Jehovah say as he left the camp.
Herbert West doubled back to the camp when he heard Jehovah scream his name, and there, standing at length from Jehovah and the fire, was a Deep One encased in a deep sea diving suit, steam whooshing from a vent in the helmet. On his back, Herbert marveled at the hit-and-miss engine that looked to be converting water into steam, then recycling it back into the tank, the occasional release to keep pressure from building in the suit.
“Now there’s something you don’t see every day,” he said. “A steam-powered fishman.”
And it stood there staring at them with bulbous, unblinking eyes.
Turnbuckle Tango
The makeshift laboratory was a clusterfuck of mismatched tubes and vessels. Airline tubing mainlined into lengths of garden hose, and glass beakers sat vigil alongside plastic bottles and paper cups, all of which contained various bubbling liquids and liquefied gases. Dr. West, in an off-white lab coat, stood at a wooden door on two sawhorses, looking into what was obviously a child’s first microscope. Jehovah lay sleeping on a pile of rags that looked suspiciously like a three-piece suit.
Outside a
small window set into a cinderblock wall, a swarm of angler moths bobbed up and down looking for darkness, their light stalks creating a blur of bioluminescence.
A sudden crash shattered the silence of the room, and Herbert West looked over at the source.
“Gabriel! Please refrain from handling my work,” he said. “I have a limited supply of materials and time. I must create more re-agent, then we have to be off. Our work here is bound to attract something—or someone—most unsavory.”
Gabriel stared at West, his unblinking eyes dark and milky, like ink from a squid. Jehovah jumped as the steam release on Gabriel’s deep sea diving suit whooshed. The small brass wheel of his hit-and-miss engine started to turn, powering the water pump, condenser, and recycler on his backpack, filling the suit with the life-sustaining steam that kept the Deep One alive.
Gabriel tried to bend in an attempt to clean up his mess, but only succeeded in banging his helmet on another of the lab tables, causing West to yell out.
“Leave it, please!” he said, and tried to shoo him away.
Jehovah stood, stretched and looked around, sleep still in his drooping eyes.
“Are we almost done here?” he asked. “I don’t feel safe here, it’s too quiet, and that’s never a good sign.”
“The batch of re-agent is complete, but it still needs tested,” West replied. “It wouldn’t do us any favors to walk away from a perfectly good lab with a bad batch of elixir, now would it?”
“I don’t suppose so,” Jehovah said.
In the center of the room, a larger table, made from plywood and two-by-fours, was heaped with a shape; a shape covered by a stained, wrinkled sheet.
“Who’s the stiff?” Jehovah asked, as Gabriel removed the sheet with a flourish. Beneath it laid a masked figure of some size and proportion, the mask a colorful display of apocalyptic fire. Holes where the eyes and mouth were revealed the subject’s state of decay. A t-shirt, black tights and boots completed the outfit.
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