Cthulhu Armageddon

by Phipps, C. T.

  “Does that mean she’s going to turn!?” Stephens shouted, knocking another Reanimated away with the butt of his rifle before setting it aflame with the explosive ammunition in his gun. Kicking the flaming corpse away from him, Stephens created a protective barrier in front of him. He was surprisingly cunning when he remembered to use his brain.

  “No, Stephens,” I sighed as we found ourselves pressed against the back of the central chamber. That was when I noticed a grand staircase was now behind us, a huge marble thing decorated with hanging chandeliers which had simply not been there before.

  Taking a look at it, I shouted over the blare of gunfire, “Well that doesn’t look like a trap, does it?”

  “What do we do, Captain?” Jessica said, shooting a few of the Reanimated in the legs to slow down the ones behind them. It wouldn’t work in the long run but was the only option we had in such tight quarters. With only a few flamer rounds left between us, the Reanimated were going to overwhelm us within moments.

  I didn’t have a chance to respond before the reanimated corpse of the bullet-immune cultist charged at Parker and then bit into her throat, tearing it out. Parker didn’t get a chance to scream before blood sprayed and she went down.

  I pulled out a machete my wife had blessed, then charged forward, cutting the corpse’s head clean off before ripping away the amulet. The creature fell over in an instant and ceased to move before I tossed away the amulet and jogged back into formation, shooting the entire way.

  “Jesus!” Garcia said, right before a Reanimated on the ground grabbed his leg and pulled him to the floor. It crawled up on him and gouged out both his eyes with its thumbs, tearing away his face with its teeth. Jessica managed to shoot it, as did Stephens, but it was a futile gesture since a half-dozen more Reanimated were already upon Garcia, tearing him apart. There was nothing that could be done for him and he had to be abandoned if we were going to survive.

  “Up the staircase!” I ordered, sick to my stomach at our losses. “We’ll switch to pistols once we reach the top and try to take them out one by one.”

  “Murderers!” Stephens cried out, tossing his heavy assault rifle on the ground. The last of his flamer ammunition was expended. He then pulled out a refurbished Desert Eagle and started shooting Reanimated after Reanimated in the head. This was a mission of revenge now for my teammate and I worried I’d lost him.

  Jimmy was slower getting his pistol, instead getting overwhelmed by a horde of the creatures when his assault rifle ammunition ran out. Stephens didn’t hesitate to throw himself into close quarters combat with Jimmy’s attackers, firing the gun into their faces at point-blank range.

  “No! Stephens … fall back!” I cried out, lifting up my own pistol as I watched Jimmy crawl out from under the mass of reanimated dead. What happened next was bloodcurdling; Stephens was ripped limb from limb as the monsters chopped away at his arms before pulling him to pieces.

  “Son of a bitch!” Jimmy coughed, bleeding from the mouth as he crawled on the ground, pulling his own gun out to shoot a few avenging rounds at the individuals murdering his squad mate.

  “I said fall back!” I repeated my order. I snapped the neck of a Reanimated coming within inches of me and fired a few shots into the heads of the ones between Jimmy and me. I’d not lost any squad mates since the Color Incident and it was painful to experience it again. Private Stephens hadn’t been my favorite trooper but he’d willingly laid down his life for Jimmy. It made me ashamed I’d ever doubted him.

  Everyone, finally, moved back into formation as we were given breathing room by the burning corpses before us. The fire we’d set, plus all the Reanimated we’d shot in the spines, slowed down the thirty or forty undead remaining to give us time to get up the staircase. We’d inflicted massive casualties on them but at a terrible price.

  I was first up the stairs, almost to the top, with Jessica behind me. Jimmy trailed behind us, possibly wounded. A number of Reanimated broke through the fiery barrier and charged up at him. Refusing to leave a man behind, I lifted my pistol up and descended the stairs, shooting one after the other in the head. Five were down as Jimmy passed me. I, for a second, thought we were going to make it.

  That was when a lone Reanimated assassin at the bottom of the staircase, a woman missing the lower portion of her jaw, lifted a revolver and fired over my head three times. I didn’t even see her until it was too late. Clicking off a final round, I sent her spiraling down to the ground where she joined the ranks of her other forever-dead colleagues.

  “Captain!” Jessica cried out.

  Turning around, I saw Jimmy had been hit by all three rounds in the back of his head. Both of his eyes had been shot through and so had the back of his mouth.

  “Dammit!” I spit, knowing we didn’t have time to mourn our losses. I’d gotten my entire team killed but forced that thought from my head. I needed to survive and get my sole remaining teammate to safety. I didn’t care if I got killed at this point but I had to cling to the idea I could salvage one of my brethren. “Jessica, keep moving up the stairs! We’ve got to get a move on!”

  I didn’t have time to say more because black tendrils descended on us both, throwing us to the ground and sinking into our skin like leeches before lifting us into the air. I was able to catch a brief glimpse of their source at the top of the stairs, a figure standing in front of the gigantic blob-like thing producing the tendrils. It was a white-haired man with skin the color of chalk dressed in a dirty suit leftover from centuries past. I recognized him as Alan Ward, my old teacher and one of the last human scientists left on the planet.

  What the hell was he doing here?

  I didn’t have time to think about it before I passed out.

  Chapter Three

  The first thing I saw when I woke up was a blinding bright light. My mouth was full of saliva and I had a splitting headache. Attempting to move, I found my wrists and feet were tied to the back of a chair.

  “Hello?” a soft female voice spoke in my ear. “Are you comfortable?”

  I hated it when captors were polite. The memory of my team’s death was fresh in my mind and I was tempted to bite at the throat of whoever was holding me. I was still too weak and in shock to respond with anything but the mildest rebuke, though. “Fuck off. You can go to hell for all you’ve done.”

  “I’m lucky I don’t believe in hell. You’re not a prisoner, though, John, at least not of mine. You’re also not in enemy hands.”

  “What?” I blinked, wishing I could see what was going on. “Where am I? Where’s Doctor Ward?”

  “Doctor Ward hasn’t been part of the Remnant for decades.”

  I spit the saliva out of my mouth on the ground and tried to get my bearings. “I’m confused. I don’t know where I am or how I got here.”

  “Obviously.”

  The light moved away from my face, revealing I was in one of the Remnant’s hospitals. Most certainly not the Black Cathedral. I also wasn’t wearing the uniform I’d been wearing when I’d been struck by Doctor Ward’s magic. That, briefly, filled me with a sense of relief. Then I realized the person holding me was one of the most infamous interrogators in the Remnant and the attire I was wearing was a gray prison jumpsuit.

  Dammit, so much for not being a prisoner. Rather than focus on my circumstances, I instead looked over my captor. If not for who she was, it wouldn’t have been an unpleasant sight to look on. Mercury Takahashi was a thirty-something crimson-haired woman wearing a dirt-smudged laboratory coat, slacks, and an old but serviceable green shirt which highlighted a pleasant-looking body. Thin like most of us but not emaciated, Mercury’s almond-shaped eyes, dimples, and soft cheekbones made her quite pretty. Supposedly, that only made her more effective at her job.

  “Do you remember who I am?” the woman asked, almost sweetly.

  “Yes,” I answered her.

  “Do you know who you are?” Mercury blinked, trying to read my reactions.

  It was a strange question; I knew e
xactly who I was and didn’t understand why I shouldn’t. “Captain John Henry Booth, United States Remnant Recon and Extermination Ranger, Gamma Squadron leader.”

  A number of other useless details filled my head—like my address and where I’d gone to school. It was like my mind was fact-checking itself. I must have taken a bad blow to the head. I couldn’t even remember how I’d gotten here. It was as if there was this terrible blackness in the back of my skull and I couldn’t face it.

  “Correction, John, you were a captain.” Mercury interrupted. “You were stripped of your rank three days ago. It’s 5-27-2137.”

  A month later.

  Jesus.

  “No.” I stared at her, blinking. “That’s not possible.”

  “You’ve been found guilty of murder and treason. As for your squadron, you killed them.”

  “I … Jessica too?”

  “So, you don’t deny it.”

  “The Black Cathedral killed most of them but … Alan Ward.”

  “So you mentioned. The former Director of Arcane Studies is the one who killed your squad?”

  I nodded, glad she understood. “Yes. He’s built some kind of cult in the middle of a temple in the Great Barrier Desert. Actually, it’s more like an army that can come back from the dead.”

  “You mentioned him in your sleep but the Council wasn’t interested in excuses.” Mercury almost sounded conciliatory.

  The horrible fragmented images continued to intrude on my conscious mind, driving out all else. I saw shambling mounds of rotting flesh, desiccated husks, and vile caricatures of human beings. The kind of creatures people made up legends to explain. The reality was worse than any horror story could begin to convey. I formed my memories together and recalled the Reanimated and our tragic encounter with them but, in the end, couldn’t remember what happened next. There were gaps in my memory.

  “God Almighty,” I whispered, wishing I could clutch my head in horror. The bindings prevented me from doing so, holding me fast despite my struggles against them.

  “I’d be careful about calling on gods. You never know what sort of being will answer,” Mercury said, walking to a nearby cabinet. She pulled out a syringe and a clear, fluid-filled vial. Mercury proceeded to fill the syringe in her hand with the vial’s contents and walked over to inject it into my arm. “This should help you relax. How badly were you injured out there?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, my mouth dry.

  The room wasn’t very clean: the tile walls were stained a sickly-yellow color, the floors looked like blood was routinely spilled on them, and the paint on the cabinets was peeling. Much of the scientific equipment was old, dating back to the Pre-Rising period. The rest had been constructed from materials dating back to that time. Worst of all, there was a rotting-fish smell to the place, possibly from the experiments they conducted here on E.B.E.s. A horrible sinking sensation filled my chest, wondering whether my loved ones were suffering for this insane accusation. “My family, what about them?”

  “Your wife’s been reassigned to another spouse and your children re-purposed to other families.” Mercury had an almost reassuring smile. “They’ll be fine.”

  I wondered if she was trying to emotionally claw out my guts or if she was just that insensitive. “Thank you.”

  “Stay focused,” Mercury said, dismissing my concerns with a cavalier wave. “Do you remember what happened on your last mission?”

  “Some,” I said, sighing. “Not enough. I’m not guilty of killing my squadron, though.”

  “I know, John. No one thinks you did. You were a respected war leader and tragedies happened on the battlefield.”

  “Then why?”

  “Politics,” Mercury said, taking her equipment back to where she’d retrieved it. “No one wants to admit responsibility for losing another squadron and your survival would make you a hero or a villain. They chose villain lest you threaten their power base.”

  It was pathetic. The Council of Leaders was playing games over who got to control one dying city on a dying world. “What about my wife? Did she go along with this? Did she try and fight this?”

  Mercury spared me a look of sympathy. “Martha Booth was the first to denounce you. Her transcripts are rather colorful.”

  I closed my eyes, trying not to cry and just barely succeeded. I’d save my tears for my squad. “I see. When am I to be executed?”

  “You’ve already been executed.” Mercury walked over to a nearby desk and pulled out some extra-large black-and-white photos.

  Taking the pictures in my tightly bound hands, I looked them over. I was startled by a grisly series of images depicting my trial and execution. The pictures ended in my funeral and cremation. No one attended my funeral but security: an ignominious end for an otherwise exemplary career. She’d clearly gone to elaborate lengths to get me here. “What is this? Who made these?”

  Everything was taking on the surreal quality of a nightmare. Just when I thought I couldn’t be surprised by this terrible world, it seemed the universe was determined to provide a new and more insane display of why everything was chaos and disorder.

  “I paid your guards off in food rations. They probably think I’m going to perform some sort of ghastly experiment on you.”

  “Are you?” I was strangely calm about all this.

  “Of course not.” Mercury leaned down and whispered in my ear, her voice gaining a sultry edge to it. “Though I did let it slip I was considering using you for recreational purposes.”

  I raised an eyebrow. The staggering tastelessness on display here made me wonder if she had some form of mental infirmity. “Excuse me?”

  Mercury put a hand on the side of her hip, posing for me. “My assigned husband was seventy when I married him. I bet you would be far more entertaining.”

  “I do not bed murderers.” I remembered the horrible time I’d been a prisoner of the Dunwych. “Not willingly.”

  Mercury straightened her posture, frowning. “It’ll be a wonder if you’ll ever breed again then, especially where we’re going.”

  “You’ve lost me.” I stared down at my clothes. I would have to get a replacement set if I was going to get out of here. Already, my mind was working on ways of figuring out a plan of escape.

  “How familiar are you with the Wasteland?” Mercury asked me, bluntly.

  “Very. I’m the best scout we have.” Was the best scout they had.

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I know the Wasteland I know it well.” I answered her again, growing irritated. “I could survive in them indefinitely.”

  “What about people?” she asked, her tone a little more desperate. “Are there any people outside of the Remnant?”

  Her ignorance was quaint really, though I wanted answers. My patience was rapidly drying up. “There are many groups of humans outside of the Remnant.”

  “Are they tainted?” Mercury’s lip actually quivered. “Cannibals? Rapists?”

  I wondered what kind of stories she’d been hearing. “There are tainted, cannibals, and rapists amongst them. The majority, however, are simply people. Now what is this about?”

  Mercury took a deep breath. “I want you to take me to what passes for civilization.”

  I stared at her like she was mad. “I am not in the mood for jokes, Doctor.”

  Mercury clenched her fists. “This is no joke. I need to escape New Arkham and the Remnant. It is no longer safe for me here. I need your help to do it.”

  “You’re the Council’s scourge.” I shook my head. “Why would they want to get rid of you?”

  “No, I was their scourge. Something has happened which will change that very soon.” Mercury took a deep breath. “I can’t go through what I’ve done to other people.”

  I had no sympathy. “It is the one comfort of this cold, vast, and unloving universe that it is equally as uncomfortable and horrifying to the terrible as it is to the good. You have earned whatever is done to you.”

&
nbsp; “No one earns anything. There are survivors and the dead in this world, nothing more.” Mercury raised her hand again as if she was going to slap me. “Don’t you want to live, John?”

  I was still processing the fact Gamma Squadron was dead. Parker, Garcia, Stephens, and Jimmy all killed by the living dead. I’d had a responsibility to bring them home safely so they could help one of the last pockets of humanity survive, and I’d gotten them all killed on a fool’s errand for a Wasteland tribe.

  I deserved to die.

  But I needed to get back to the Black Cathedral.

  I needed to avenge them.

  “Call me Booth. We’re not on a first-name basis.” Knowing my family would be safer here than out in the Wasteland, I made a decision. “What do I get if I help you to civilization?”

  “Saving your life isn’t enough?” Mercury asked, looking exasperated.

  “From you? No,” I said calmly. “I have other concerns than life now.”

  I’d taken my job in the R&E Rangers as a form of protracted suicide, really. Everyone who went out into the Wasteland made peace with death. Life in New Arkham wasn’t a guarantee; at any point our ramshackle civilization could be exterminated by the horrors beyond, but it was more likely to keep you alive than being among those who scouted the surrounding territories.

  No, I wasn’t afraid of dying here.

  Only of leaving my brothers and sisters unavenged.

  A human hand had killed them.

  Ward.

  A man. Not a monster. Something which could be killed.

  “You’re impossible.” Mercury sighed, looking defeated. “I need this.”

  I was surprised by her display of weakness, half-wondering if it was an attempt to emotionally manipulate me. What sort of life did she really think could be found outside in the Wastelands, anyway? It was a rough, brutal, and unforgiving sort of existence, especially for a woman. “Make it worth my while.”

  Mercury took a deep breath and stared, her voice cracking. “I’ll get you guns, ammunition, and a jeep. Is that enough?”