Cthulhu Armageddon

by Phipps, C. T.

  “Ward …” I hissed through ragged breaths. More than ever, I wished I still had my rocket launcher. Putting a missile straight up his ass would have pleased me immensely.

  “That’s my name, yes,” Ward said, pulling forth a sword from the end of his walking stick. It was long and made of a moon-colored metal that I could not identify. “I’m sorry it’s come to this, John, but you’ve made a rather expansive mess.”

  “You killed them! You killed my friends! Tortured me! Kidnapped children and murdered more!” I spit out blood from where my lip had busted open. I tried to spit in his face but the saliva barely left my mouth as I struggled to move. I wanted desperately to strike out at the man, yet I had expended every last ounce of my strength fighting the Elder Things. I had nothing more to give, not even when faced with my squadron’s killer.

  “Oh, don’t act like that,” Ward said, taking aim with his blade. “I bear you no ill will. However, there are always winners and losers in these things. That’s assuming you even remember anything about our last fight—I’m afraid I left you a bit banged up after our last encounter.”

  Oh lovely, he’d decided to be chatty. “Go. To. Hell.”

  Ward tightly clutched his hands around his sword’s handle. “There’s no such place, John. The true gods care nothing about sin or redemption. Only humans do and we are as insignificant as rays of light caught in a black hole’s gravity. I hope your next life proves more illuminating to the universe’s truth.”

  “I’m going to kill you,” I said. It was an irrational thing to say, I knew, but I said it anyway. Somehow, against all odds, I had faith it was not going to end this way. I had to believe it; otherwise, all of this had been for nothing.

  “I sincerely doubt that,” Ward moved his sword directly over my heart. In that moment, I realized I had to play on his arrogance. I wanted to live and I needed to buy time to avenge my squadron. For that I was willing to do anything.

  Watching him raise the sword to strike, I had the dubious honor of regaining my lost memories. The Elder Thing’s psychic surgery finally took hold, restoring what I’d forgotten just as I was about to die. Just my luck, I was going to remember everything I needed to know to kill Doctor Ward when he was about to kill me.

  One moment I was seeing the Necromancer’s blade descend, the next I was once more his prisoner. I was naked, strapped to a vertical metal table, and inside a chamber of horrors. To call it a laboratory was stretching the definition. Surrounding me were strange, humming Elder Thing devices, human-constructed machines straight from the imagination of Nikola Tesla, and freakish half-dissected monsters resting on metal trays. Instead of a sterile environment, the walls were made of stone. Really, the place resembled where Doctor Frankenstein created his monster more than anything else.

  Across from me was the equally naked form of Jessica. She was breathing heavily, having apparently woken before me. My thoughts regarding her were protective, worrying about the kind of treatment a woman might receive at the hands of the Black Cathedral’s insane residents. It was a pointless worry; there was nothing I could do to prevent her assault. Yet, I would’ve gladly died a horrible death if it meant sparing her from such pain. Not that it was likely I’d get the chance. In all likelihood, we’d both be executed after extended torture. It was how things worked in the Wasteland.

  “Jessica, are you…?” I hesitated before asking more; “alright” seemed like a tremendously stupid thing to ask.

  “For now, Captain,” Jessica said before taking several deep breaths. “I haven’t been tortured if that’s what you mean.”

  I breathed a silent prayer of thanks. “I suppose we can be grateful for that, at least.”

  “Grateful?” Jessica asked.

  “We’ll get out of this, Jessica, I promise.” I wasn’t sure if it was true but I would damn well try to make it so. “How long have you been up?”

  “A few minutes,” she said, blinking, looking ready to laugh at the absurdity. “One of the cultists told me they’re going to let us watch some movies until Doctor Ward is ready to see us.”

  I blinked at her. “What?”

  A pair of Alan Ward’s Reanimated walked into the room, carrying a projector and a collapsible screen under their arms. I almost vomited when I realized they were Stephens and Jimmy, or what was left of them. Stephens’s body had been stitched back together, metal grafts visibly sticking out of his shoulder and legs. Jimmy, on the other hand, possessed neither eyes nor tongue. Where those things should have been, the holes were sewn up in a grim mockery of a human being.

  The pair carried out their labor wordlessly, reacting to neither Jessica nor me until they finished. Turning on the movie projector, the two Reanimated soldiers bowed before departing.

  “The word ‘sick’ doesn’t even begin to cover this, does it?” Jessica said, looking at them.

  “No,” I said. “It doesn’t.”

  The next six hours were spent watching—I cannot really describe this without sounding deranged even to myself—Pre-Rising horror films. The incongruity of watching moving pictures in such a grotesque environment may strike a person blackly humorous. Reliving my memories, I briefly had enough self-awareness to wish I could give a gallows laugh. I laughed at the start of the first film, screamed obscenities throughout the whole of the second film, and then silently watched the third for lack of anything better to do. We were in the hands of a madman and I was unable to do anything about it.

  As the third movie reel finally ended, I heard a rustling coming up from a nearby stairwell. Stepping into the room was Doctor Alan Ward, now dressed as an Old Earth gardener with a white apron over plain work clothes. In his left hand, he held a trough that he was cleaning dirt off with his fingers.

  “I’m terribly sorry for making you late, but you did catch me at a somewhat bad time. The Mandragora strains I’m cultivating in my gardens are nearly ripe. The screams they unleash when they are pulled are enough to kill a full-grown man at eighty paces.” He merrily waved his trough at us. “I hope you have not been too uncomfortable.”

  Jessica proceeded to unleash a torrent of profanity with such speed and hatred it would take several minutes to recite all of the insults she hurled at Doctor Ward, despite taking no more than thirty-five seconds to say them all. I did not consider all of the things she accused him of being to be insults, especially regarding his sexuality and race, but the intent was clear.

  The final bits were especially ironic, given some of the insults. “… evil, murdering, Nazi piece of shit!”

  Alan Ward blinked behind his bifocals, briefly pausing to wipe some spittle off the end of them. “My dear, the Elder Sign and my appreciation for their efficiency aside, I’m not the one who hails from a purity-obsessed fascist state. The only Nazis present, I fear, are you and Mister Booth. I, by contrast, am a more cosmopolitan sort—open to any and all perversities and species provided they amuse me.”

  I would have argued with Alan Ward, if only because New Arkham did not discriminate on race, but he preempted any discussion by snapping his fingers. Instantly, Jessica started to bleed from her nose, convulse violently, and then pass out. It was as if he had the power to control her body with his mind.

  “That was unnecessary.” I swallowed my anger and decided to interact with him on a rational level. I had dealt with several psychopaths before, mostly petty warlords and cult leaders. The key to successful negotiation was making sure you treated them as if they weren’t the monstrous little egomaniacs they were.

  “Necessity is in the eye of the beholder.” Ward spread out his hands, smiling. “Manners are always important.”

  Treating him as a rational human being was going to be more difficult than I thought. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know. Don’t worry, she won’t die. I have great plans for you both, and neither involves your deaths.” Alan Ward removed his apron and placed his trough on a nearby table.

  “What do you want?” I asked, trying to main
tain my decorum in the face of my squadron’s murderer.

  “You still think this is a conversation, don’t you?” Ward looked at me for several seconds, apparently trying to determine if I was joking. “Oh, John, I’d forgotten how amusing you could be. I’m centuries old and you’re easily the most interesting person I’ve ever met, exempting Randolph Carter.”

  “The Alan Ward I knew was a man of honor. He wouldn’t be party to the taking of children.” I was flattering him now. He’d killed friends and no matter our past relationship, the moment I was free, I would kill him for it.

  “You didn’t know me very well, then,” Ward said, sighing. “I have always been willing to do whatever it takes to save humanity.”

  Jessica interrupted my attempts to talk him down. “Save humanity? Is that what you call those things out there? You animated a bunch of corpses to kill us! You killed our squad, you killed our friends.”

  “I’ve killed many members of the R&E Rangers, although you probably don’t realize it, and hundreds of Remnant citizens besides. I control much of the wildlife outside of New Arkham, the cults as well. What started as a disaffected group of mutants and savages living in ruins, I have forged into an empire. The Color was summoned by me and I brought down other horrors as well.”

  Jessica’s eyes blazed with hate.

  I closed my eyes. “I don’t believe you. No one can control the horrors of the Wasteland. We are subject to it, not its masters.”

  “In a world where there are few gods who care for us but many who don’t, the universe is as cruel to the Great Old Ones as it is humanity.” Ward closed his eyes. “New Arkham is irrelevant to my activities, but I needed test subjects and they were a ready source. I’m sorry it’s come to this but we’re all expendable in the grand scheme of things.”

  I abandoned any pretense of negotiation. “You’re a sick man, Ward. What is your plan anyway? Do you intend to make your own little empire out here? Raise all these children to worship you as a god?”

  “Close enough,” Ward said, opening his eyes. “Humanity is a sick, dying, weak species. The Elder Things envy our will to survive but we are on the road to oblivion. We need a new humanity to rise from the ashes and I have created it. It will not be a mankind which carries the failures of the Old Race, though. I want to raise the better half of man to godhood, not its monkey side.”

  “You intend to experiment on these children,” I said in a hushed whisper. “Turn them into something like the Deep Ones.”

  Martha had been right.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, John. I’ve been experimenting since before the Great Old Ones rose. In previous lives, I studied alchemy and necromancy in hopes of finding ways to overcome death. I learned the secret to taking over the bodies of my descendants before mankind was performing open-heart surgery. Only now with the technology of the Elder Things have I perfected my science.” He shook his fist in the air, his eyes gleaming. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “That you’re crazy?” Jessica said, not helping our situation.

  Ward ignored her and stared into my eyes. “You know what I can achieve, John. You’ve seen my early work.”

  “Your current results are … what exactly?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  “John!” Jessica shouted, betrayed.

  “The bowels of this temple are filled with the half-alive foul abominations my earlier failures created, but I have at last found perfection in the arcane sciences. The children I’ve taken will eat of the fruits of my labors, becoming as eternal and undying as the Old Ones.”

  “And they’ll still be human?”

  “More or less, yes,” Ward snorted in derision at my questioning look. “Once I have fostered my children to the next stage in our race’s evolution, we will take to the stars through the Dreamlands and bring forth a world where we can live in peace.”

  A part of me wanted to believe he could do it. That there was a terrible, possible hope for humanity to survive. In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to accept humanity had a future. “You can’t just change the nature of humanity.”

  “As if there was something special about our race of upjumped chimps,” Ward said.

  Jessica continued swearing at him, trying to gain his attention and promising violence should she get free.

  “Leave me out of it,” I said. “I won’t help you. Willingly or otherwise.”

  “Not even immortality and immunity to disease can persuade you?” Ward crossed his arms, raising an eyebrow.

  “No.”

  “Then I fear I have to take what benefit of your body I can. If you will not be my body, you will be spare parts.” Ward began unbuttoning his shirt. “You see, the unfortunate side effect of magic is that every use of it exposes you to potential catastrophic side effects. I coined the term ‘M-Rads’ to draw a parallel to nuclear radiation. The results, however, are arguably worse.”

  I began pulling against my bands, weakening them, while Ward exposed his bare chest. All across his chest were mouths, mouths with sharpened inhuman teeth and tongues! Wiggling, slithering tongues! In between those inhuman maws were eyes, both human and inhuman, by the hundreds!

  They blinked and stared at me, clearly aware and sapient as any eyes on a human face. I was almost too shocked to continue my plan, the sight of his disgusting mutations freezing me in place.

  “My God.” I almost vomited then and there. “What are you?”

  “A work in progress,” Ward said softly. He slowly began buttoning up his shirt, flicking one of the long pointed tongues sticking out towards me. “Once I become like the Great Old Ones, my current state will cease to be an issue, but I do not want to take any chances.”

  I was almost ready; I could feel the restraints beginning to buckle. Even so, I stuttered with fear. I hadn’t reacted like this since I was a child. “I-I don’t see how this applies to me.”

  “Your slut of a mother may well have conceived you with my seed. It’s a long shot but my current form is incapable of breeding a new body should this one fail. I like to hedge my bets.” Ward said, reaching over to pat me on the cheek. “Do you understand?”

  It was the aspersions on my mother’s character which gave me the strength to shatter my bonds. The leather straps around my wrist, chest, and legs snapped in quick succession before the mad sorcerer-scientist’s astonished eyes. Before he could bring up a spell to defend himself, I socked him across the jaw with more force than I’d ever struck a man.

  Doctor Ward possessed power equivalent to the gods, rivaling the sorcerers of Old Earth myth like Merlin or Eibon, yet he was still human. Kicking him in the hideous mutant mouths growing out of his chest, I shattered several of their teeth before grabbing a nearby beaker of glowing fluid and smashing it against his face. Whatever bizarre alchemical substances it contained, it burned the demonic doctor’s face like acid.

  As he screamed, I lifted him high in the air above my head and hurled him into some nearby electrified machinery. A titanic explosion followed with his body lying in the rubble of the machine’s remains, tortured and shocked. Some sort of evil god must have been on his side, however, because he continued to breathe.

  Searching for some sort of weapon to crush the man’s skull and end his evil reign of terror, I found a thick steel rod that I lifted over my head. Doctor Ward could do nothing to stop me, having been knocked unconscious by my savage attack.

  “Goodbye, Doctor,” I said with a smile on my lips. “It’s been a pleasure.”

  My sense of victory was premature. No sooner was I bringing down the rod than someone struck me across the back of the head with a blunt instrument. Hitting the ground hard, my vision became woozy as I glanced over my shoulder at the figure behind me. It was Peter Goodhill, the coward who’d betrayed Gamma Squadron and whom I’d failed to kill in our last encounter.

  Peter was not yet covered in his Dunwych tattoos, instead wearing military fatigues and a green beret affixed with the Elder Sign. In his hands was a wood
en baseball bat covered in my blood.

  “Traitor,” I coughed, staring up at him.

  “Shut up,” Peter replied, bringing his boot down on my face. Once more, I hit the ground unconscious.

  This was getting to be a bad habit.

  Chapter Eighteen

  For a brief moment, I was aware of my present state in my flashback. The discovery that Peter Goodhill was a servant of Ward made me think about my encounter with him in Richard’s garage. Peter working for “The Necromancer” explained a great deal, from his unusual friendliness to why he’d suddenly decided to join the Dunwych after a post-desertion career of self-serving behavior. Peter was nothing more than a plant by the old sorcerer-scientist.

  Peter was a means for Ward to gain information on any plots the Dunwych might be formulating against him. Any guilt I felt towards nearly beating Peter to death evaporated, replaced only by the regret that I did not finish the job. I had precious little time to think on the revelation because my memories resumed with a feverish dream-like quality.

  I remembered being punished for my almost successful assassination of the insane scientist. Doctor Ward was a master of inflicting ungodly pain upon a human body. When he was not doing so, bizarre medical tests involving injections and spellwork were performed.

  I had read of encounters with “Grays” and the Plutonian Mi-Go species, where men were abducted and subjected to traumatizing scientific experiments. Those stories were the closest thing I could think of to compare my experience to. Blessedly, Ward feared me so much that he kept me doped up on a cocktail of drugs so strong I could barely feel much of what I endured.

  There were other things too, things I could barely recall because Ward began to experiment with possession. Scattered images filled my head of elaborate gladiator contests. Battles where he wore my body like a suit, using golden revolvers to fight various monsters of his own creation.

  I vaguely recalled Jessica fighting in these contests as well, something which only increased my hatred of Ward. I took no pleasure in the victories I remembered; each one signaled the doctor gaining a greater control over my form. It was close to eight days before I regained control of my body. It took that long for the drugs to pass from my system and to recover enough mental strength to drive Ward’s presence from my mind.