“Why do we humans have such a feeling of strangeness? Is this necessary? I have not yet considered it deeply, but it may be important to our self-preservation. We must complete the map of the uncanny valley to know what is human…”
The ground and the sky shared much in common: both charred black. Overhead that came in the form of storm clouds seemingly made from swirling soot. They shielded the land from the summer sun; it felt more like a frosty fall day.
Below, the terrain might have once been full of fruitful foothills, but now lay covered in a fine grain of charcoal dirt lacking any fertility. Even the smattering of weeds scattered here and there were long dead.
Ahead of Trevor the land rose to a lip of rock like the outer rim of a crater. The map identified the area as Satka, Russia, but some great upheaval had terra-formed the land into something an astronomer might expect to find on the harsh worlds of Mars or Venus. It felt wrong. Warped. Diseased. Dead. And devoid of hope.
He stepped to the parapet with JB at his side. It dropped away in a soft slope of gravel and more black dirt. A few dozen feet below the ground leveled again. Trevor reconsidered. This did not appear to be a crater, but a place where a great mass of Earth had sunk.
At the bottom of the hill the land stretched east on a plain of black soil and dried stalks that might have once been trees. Something had flattened the foothills approaching the Urals. No sign of Satka remained. No crushed buildings. No rubble. No stretches of street, no lamp posts, no trees-nothing.
The mountains themselves also suffered the devil’s touch. Trevor saw a massive wall stretching hundreds of feet in the air like a frozen tidal wave of rock devoid of color; as if a God’s bulldozer had dug apart the land, turning it into something cold and harsh; a fitting landscape for a circle in Dante’s Inferno.
Three miles across the stamped-flat plains at the foot of the barrier wall of rock waited the Temple of Voggoth: an infection of green and red bubbling from the surface of a cancer-ridden Earth. Spires of twisted vine reached hundreds of feet into the air from a convex roof lined with ribs. Wisps of smoke or steam slipped into the evening sky from hidden vents.
Smaller buildings-some round, some square, some domes-flanked the main hall like a cluster of foul warts.
Through a set of field glasses, Trevor spied a small group of defenders-mainly Spider Sentries-positioned around the facility; nothing that could not be handled in a few short minutes by Alexander’s approaching army.
“Is that where it is, Father?”
Trevor lowered his binoculars and found his son’s eyes.
“Yes, JB. Are you-are you afraid?”
Jorgie did not answer at first but his eyes wavered. He told his dad, “I trust you, Father.”
“Trevor!” Alexander’s voice interrupted. “You have to see this. Come here.”
The Englishman beckoned them away from the cliff and off the dusty path that had served as the main road to their destination. As they followed Alexander, Trevor took stock of his forces. They came from the west, a line of headlights spaced between packs of horses and carts, motorbikes and trucks. The collective sound of their engines made the ground tremble and filled a dark sky-far too dark for early evening-with a steady roar. Somewhere off in that dark sky a helicopter whirred.
He knew they would keep coming. In the ten days since marching through Zhytomyr, Alexander managed to tighten their formations a great deal. Yet still, the long snake of an army stretched for miles and they would arrive piecemeal at a continuous rate for the rest of the day, if not longer.
“Come on, Trevor! You have to see this!”
With Royal Marines on their flanks, Trevor and JB followed Alexander through an orchard of small trees that were now nothing more than tall sticks. It appeared to Trevor that something had sucked the life out of the plants so fast that they did not have time to fall. He saw what amounted to be tree skeletons propped upright in neat lines.
At the end of the orchard they came to a gentle hill that sloped away to the south forming a huge bowl of sorts ringed on all sides by more hills.
Gaston-the lanky black man who scouted for the Europeans-stood at the top of that gentle knoll with Armand and a small group of biker-cavalry.
“Father? What is it?”
Trevor made out things of various shapes and sizes filling the small valley, but no movement.
“My God,” Armand-standing next to his ride in his biker’s leather-muttered. “I think I have never seen the like. Am I really seeing this?”
Trevor raised his binoculars for a better view. His eyes managed to adjust to the darkness and as they did, he understood what he saw.
The tanks stood out the most. About a half-dozen Russian T-72s as still as statues. Their green armor had faded in several spots and thin coats of black dust settled across the cupolas. Their thick treads and long barrels made Trevor see them as something akin to T-Rex fossils: harmless at the moment, but fearsome to behold.
An additional pair of tracked vehicles shared the same fate as the tanks. It took Trevor’s collection of genetic memories a moment to identify them as Akatsiya self-propelled artillery pieces. Several wheeled vehicles in the form of BTR APCs also shared the graveyard of armor.
Yet it was not the tanks, APCs, or self-propelled artillery that piqued Trevor’s interest the most. That honor fell upon the dozens of empty-and some collapsed-tents, the boxes upon boxes of supply crates, the trio of tanker trucks, the collection of assault rifles and carbines lying about and-most important of all-the Russian army jackets, shirts, pants and boots scattered by the hundreds throughout the field. Enough clothes for a small army.
Gaston-who once worked for Russian intelligence-murmured loud enough for all to hear: “The 276 ^ th motorized rifle regiment. Part of the 34 ^ th Motor Rifle Division.”
A dry, cool wind blew across the scene. The sleeves of empty jackets waved.
“What the hell happened to them?” Armand asked.
“They disappeared,” Trevor answered. “It was happening all the time right before the invasion started. Remember?”
Gaston said, “I have heard that during those first days the central government lost contact with villages and towns along the Urals and that elements of the 34 ^ th Motor Rifle Division were on a training maneuver near here. They were probably dispatched to ascertain the situation.”
“So what happened to them?” Alexander alternated his attention from Trevor to Gaston and back again. “What does it mean?”
Armand quickly shot, “It means more fuel and bullets for us, I would think. Don’t you?”
Trevor pinched his nose as if trying to sort through a chaotic collection of thoughts. He managed to simplify and told them, “Look, it doesn’t matter much right about now. Armand is right, see what your people can scavenge from the wreck. We have bigger things to think about.”
“The buildings down there,” Alexander stepped closer to Trevor. “Is that what we’ve come for?”
“Buildings?” Armand wanted in on the conversation. “What buildings?” Apparently he thought the remains of a vanished Russian regiment served as the day’s biggest revelations.
Jorgie, perhaps trying to chase away concerns over what was to come, hurried to Armand and took hold of his hand. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
With one arm holding his stuffed bunny and the other leading the Frenchman, Jorgie Benjamin Stone led the group away from the abandoned military equipment, through the orchard of skeletal trees, and to the ledge overlooking the dead plain where Voggoth’s temple waited.
The rumbling mass of charcoal-colored clouds sprung to life with a sudden blast of energy. Lightning sizzled. Thunder boomed.
“You can see it all from here, Mr. Armand,” Jorgie tried to sound cheerful; a stark contrast to everything around him. “It’s right there.”
Jorgie stopped speaking as they reached the cliff and gazed across the earth toward the monstrous wall of mountain. The plain there-the one stretching from the observation point to the temple-was no longer empty.
All around the temple lay thousands of blobs of green goo of various sizes and shapes. Trevor could not be sure, but he thought he saw puffs of smoke-maybe steam-rising from the things. Perhaps cooling or sizzling after their journey through time and space.
“My god…” Armand’s voice trailed off.
One by one-repeated a thousand times-the green bubbles ripped and popped and parted. The barbed legs and jagged fangs and sharp claws of thousands of monsters of more shapes and sizes than any nightmare could conjure poked and pushed free from the capsules.
Trevor recalled how humans taken in the vessels had been found unconscious, but Voggoth’s demons traveled with no such limitations. No doubt the discrepancy lay in the difference between life and lifeless. Regardless, Voggoth had brought an army to face them. An army, Trevor felt certain, that a moment ago infested the cities and towns of middle America in years past.
Those creatures could have done no good against Dreadnoughts and armored divisions, K9 corps and jet fighters. But there in the shadow of the Urals they could serve Voggoth as a last-gasp stopgap against the surprise strike of the European force.
“My god, what do we do?” Alexander’s shock and surprise cut through his more rational tendencies.
Armand coolly answered the obvious, “We bring the army up. We fight.”
“But if Voggoth could do this once, he may very well keep doing it.”
Trevor told Alexander, “Let’s hope so.”
Even Armand found that answer surprising.
Trevor said, “After we cut through these things, Voggoth will send more. And then more. And then more. He will keep sending them until he can stop us from doing what we came here to do. I think that each time he brings these things through space and time it disrupts the natural order of things, like splashes in a quiet pond. I think the other beings who are involved in all this know that he should not be making those splashes, but they’ve either not noticed or ignored him so far. Let him keep sending them until those splashes can’t be ignored. If he does it enough, maybe someone will listen to me.”
Alexander and Armand shared a look and then Alexander asked, “ Who will listen to you, Trevor?”
He did not answer Alexander’s question. Instead he knelt and rested his hands on his son’s shoulders. With his eyes settling smoothly on Jorgie, Trevor said to the others, “We have to get in that temple. Armand, I’m counting on you to get us past all that. Can you do that?”
Armand snorted a chuckle.
“Can I do that? Trevor, it is what I was born to do.”
The mortar shell exploded in the midst of a group of charging, four-legged horse-sized creatures covered in metal-like armor with horns and jagged barbs everywhere. The concussion from the blast knocked three of the things over but they each regained their feet fast. A fourth was not so lucky. Shrapnel hit it square in its relatively unprotected face; a face covered in pin-sized lights that might be eyes arranged above a screaming, elongated jaw from which bellowed one last ghastly death-scream as the blast tore away its blood-red flesh.
Not far from them, a swarm of things best described as mutated alligators-dozens of them-charged at the northern flank of the European lines. Their spines glowed white from some unearthly energy bottled inside; their snouts snapped open and shut, flashing hooked teeth. The rest of their bodies were covered in constant slither as thousands of tiny parasites-worms of a hellish sort-lived on the hides of the devilish things.
A tripod mounted machine gun behind a wall of toppled boulders met the monsters hitting those in the lead snuffing whatever spark of motivation masqueraded as life within the damned animals. Still, more than half of the alligator-beasts crashed into the machine gun nest. One German soldier was caught between jaws from behind as he abandoned his post a second too late. Another managed to break free thanks to covering fire provided from Turkish assault rifles, but one of the warped alligators spat a stream of fire from its belly and incinerated the man.
Similar scenes repeated across the battle field as the lead elements of the European army arrived soldier by soldier, truck by truck and the legion of monsters guarding the temple moved to meet them.
To the south at the foot of the ridge overlooking the black plains, a line of Spanish infantrymen with light arms and grenades waded into a sea of half-metal devil dogs the size of small cars.
To the north a brave charge of Italian horse soldiers violently collided with rhinoceros-like beasts sporting twin horns from which arced electrical bolts capable of microwaving a man.
Across the center raged a chaotic battle. Polish fighters on foot and in light trucks advanced with Danish regulars on their flanks. They hit the enemy with assault rifles and mounted machine guns. That enemy hit back with burning balls of screaming fire flying like comets and dropping napalm on the human ranks; with axe-wielding ten-foot-tall crimson-colored octopuses slashing the attackers in an insane fury; with bipedal yellow-eyed fur-covered mammals resembling upright tigers capable of leaping fifty feet in one bound.
On the ridge to the west, mankind’s reinforcements kept coming as the stretched army arrived at its destination piece by piece. Military vehicles with machine gun and anti-tank mounts re-fueled and deployed toward the action; towed artillery assembled and prepared to fire; fighters ranging from young and old, amateur to professional grabbed rifles and pistols and raced toward the action.
To the east beneath the wall of rock cut out of the Urals, bolts of lightning reached from the charred heavens to the Temple of Voggoth. Every few minutes those flashes illuminated yet another crop of green sarcophagi appearing on the plains around the blasphemous building. Those bulbs burst open and more claws, mandibles, and walking horrors joined Voggoth’s defenses.
The battle raged in the sky. The Euro Tiger helicopter strafed the demonic mobs with cannon fire. Giant flying insects swooped into the chaos and plucked hapless victims from the carnage like gulls snatching fish from the sea.
This was no pitched battle. It was the nature of war itself: bloody, anarchic, and merciless. The wonder weapons of man’s futuristic arsenal played no role. Bullets fired at close range-explosives tearing apart apparitions-sharp and blunt weapons, fists and kicks battled talons and jaws, breath of fire, spitting acid, and swinging clubs.
A V-shaped formation of motorcycles cut through the madness. Heavy cavalry led the charge with lances knocking aside and skewering any beast that dared block the path. Guns blasted; swords swung. Armand’s riders led the way like a plow clearing a snow-covered road.
In the middle of the formation, Rick Hauser drove the heavily armored van Trevor and JB had called home during three weeks of travel from France to Eurasia.
One of the Royal Marines sat in the passenger seat alongside Hauser. Trevor and JB huddled behind gripping the van’s cargo nets as the vehicle bounced and wobbled over rough terrain and dead bodies. Through the windshield Trevor could see Armand on his Ducati zipping side to side and adding his FAMAS fire wherever the battle needed it.
The scene outside the van’s windows reminded Trevor of the Battle of Five Armies, albeit on a much grander scale. The shots of gunfire, the thumps of explosions, the clang of armor, and the screams of victims filtered to his ears but the sounds were hollowed by the insulation of the van’s walls. It gave the noise an unreal edge; as if it might come from a radio broadcast.
He glanced at his boy. Jorgie held the cargo net in a death-grip. Water streamed from his eyes.
“Jorgie, what is it?”
A stupid question, of course. Nine-year-old boys did not belong in the midst of such carnage. Still, Jorgie looked more sad than afraid.
“Father-this is so-this is very bad…”
Trevor slung an arm on his son’s shoulders.
“Yes, it is,” he felt it important that his mysterious son realize as much. “People are dying out there. Lives are being lost, Jorgie. Fathers and sons; even mothers and daughters. That’s why we have to stop it.”
Trevor waited for a response from the boy who had often thought battle a glorious endeavor.
Jorgie mumbled only, “Yes.”
The vehicle took a particularly nasty jolt and a side of the van bent in from an exterior impact. Trevor glanced out and saw, through the tiny windows at the rear, a motorcycle spin out of control into a mob of dog-sized worms. A second later that bike detonated in a flash of yellow and orange.
Trevor turned his attention forward. He saw Armand balancing his FAMAS in one hand while steering his bike with the other. The man shot a flying thing that tried to dive bomb the formation.
Inside the van, Hauser-struggling with keeping control on the rocks, uneven ground, and bodies passing beneath the wheels-said, “We’re almost to the front entrance. Get ready.”
At that moment one of the heavy cavalry riders in bulky body armor tumbled end over end, separating person from bike. Trevor saw something akin to a horned turtle standing where the rider had been but he caught only a glimpse as the spearhead continued on at a rapid pace leaving both the turtle-thing and the rider to their fates.
Trevor leaned forward to see above the fray. And yes, there loomed the massive Temple of Voggoth beneath boiling black clouds.
“Just drop us off, Rick. Then you and the rest get out of here.”
“Sir, I signed on for the whole ride.”
“Thanks, but you can’t help us inside and if you stay outside you’ll be overrun. Get back to the main lines and help Armand and Alexander keep the fight going.”
Bam!
The van flew and landed on the driver’s side. Crates, buckets, Jorgie’s cot, ammo boxes, canned food, Trevor and JB all fell in a jumble against the toppled side of the van which slid and spun several more feet. From outside came the roar of something very big. And gunfire.
Trevor immediately found his son. Jorgie appeared dazed but in one piece. Then he leaned forward to check on Rick Hauser and the Royal Marine. With the exception of the indignity of having fallen on top of one another, the two men up front remained uninjured.
“Something big came out of the ground,” Hauser said as he struggled to right himself “We have got to get you moving. Is JB okay?”
“Yeah. We’re ready.”
“Wait here,” the Marine said as he produced an SA80 bullpup assault rifle and reached up for the passenger door. “I’ll pop open the back.”
Hauser used his hands to help hoist the soldier up and out through the passenger side door that was now at the ‘top’ of the overturned vehicle.. Then he, too, went in that direction.
More gunfire rang out from the immediate vicinity as Armand’s riders dealt with whatever had flipped the van.
Trevor found an HK MP5 and urgently grasped it in one hand. Jorgie did something similar, except he grasped his wrapped bunny albeit with even more urgency.
The rear of the van opened. Hauser motioned them out while the stoic Royal Marine stood nearby pointing his gun at something. Judging by the way he craned his neck, that something was rather tall.
“Father…”
“C’mon, Jorgie. It’s time to go.”
Trevor took his son’s hand and led them from the overturned van.
The air felt cold. Far colder than even a Russian summer should feel; cold enough to see white puffs from Hauser’s mouth as he encouraged their exit. Trevor suspected the chill came from a blackened sky that had blocked out the sun in that area probably for more than a decade.
Now that night had fallen, not even the faintest of glimmers tried to poke through the rolling clouds. No stars shone. But light did come from the periodic flashes of lightning. Those flashes-as brilliant as they could be-felt sterile, too: less like a force of nature and more like the snap of a photographer’s bulb.
The motorcyclists had successfully cut a path through the mob of combatants. While that mob still raged 50 meters away to the west, the immediate area surrounding the fallen van was clear. Save for the thing sprouting from the ground.
It wavered in the air like a warped version of Jack’s beanstalk, stretching a hundred meters into the pitch-black sky and swaying side to side. Trevor saw scales and pulsing veins and slithering eel-like parasites all along the thick body. At the top lived a triangle of bone and tendons that opened wide and screamed a high-pitched holler into the night.
“Around the front-move it, you hear?” The Marine ordered as he fired a burst at the tall creature. Hauser acted the part of usher and shuffled Trevor and JB away.
The van had come to rest 20 yards from the short but wide flight of granite-like steps that led to a set of fibrous doors.
A Spider Sentry fired at Armand’s cavalry from atop those stairs. Bodies of several of the gray-skinned Ogres lay nearby. Armand had kept his promise to get them to the temple. Unfortunately, two bodies clad in riders’ leather lay on the hard ground at the foot of the stairs and several more carried on the fight despite serious wounds.
“Move! Move!” The Marine shouted as he covered their advance to the temple.
The giant creature struck down. It’s triangular head split open and engulfed the armored van. A moment later the creature straightened to its full height and spat the car with great force. It tumbled through the sky and crashed into the mob of monsters.
The orb that served as body and head to the Spider Sentry at the temple doors cracked and withered from a string of bullets. Its spindly legs lost strength and the creature collapsed.
Armand wasted no time.
“Perimeter! Form a perimeter!”
When the beanstalk-thing struck again it was met by licks of fire from a flamethrower. Its ‘head’ burned like a grotesque candle, melting from the top down.
As for the rest of Voggoth’s pets, machine gun fire and tossed grenades from the half-circle of human defenders kept the army of monsters at bay for the time being while Armand slapped a bundle of explosives on the temple doors.
“Fire in the hole!”
Trevor crouched to the ground and covered JB’s head. Hauser provided his body as another layer of shielding over the boy. A dull explosion slapped the air and a man-sized hole in the fan-like doors appeared-leading to darkness.
Hauser tapped Trevor’s arm and asked, “Are you sure you couldn’t use some back up in there?”
“I’m sure. Here, you could use this more than me,” and he handed the MP5 machine pistol to the man who had been his personal pilot for so many years.
“Good luck to you, boss,” Hauser took the gun and then ruffled Jorgie’s hair. “You take care of your dad.”
JB returned the gesture with a sweet but unsure smile.
The entry point secure, Trevor hurried up the stairs while Hauser joined the ranks of warriors at the perimeter. The Marine covered Trevor and his boy but he did not have enough bullets for all the monsters that would soon flood in.
A girl manning the defensive line fell over with a spear-like projectile through her stomach. The arm of a man wearing a blue racing suit caught fire and he rolled on the black ground screaming. A bike exploded sending wheels, handle bars, and an exhaust assembly smashing into the temple walls.
Trevor hurried toward the hole in the blasted door with his son in tow. He met Armand at the top of the stairs and said, “Thank you.”
“I come with you.”
“No. You can’t help. Out here-this is where I need the warriors.”
A shout from the perimeter warned of a pending charge by the nightmares. The rat-tat-tat of heavy gunfire accentuated the point. The Royal Marine standing by Trevor’s side fired a burst of bullets at something in the distance.
Trevor added, “Get your people out of here. Keep fighting, no matter what happens.”
Armand shook his head in frustration, but only for a moment. He placed a hand on Trevor’s shoulders.
“Good luck to you, Trevor Stone. Whatever happens, it has been fun, yes?”
Trevor nodded.
Armand yelled to his force, “Saddle up! We will withdraw back to our lines!”
An explosion from across the battlefield suggested Alexander managed to get the heavy artillery into the fight, yet Trevor knew Voggoth’s reinforcements would keep coming-and coming-and coming unless he could do something. Or Jorgie could.
Armand descended the stairs. The perimeter of biker cavalry collapsed in an orderly fashion to their rides. Hauser found the back of a bike, as did the Royal Marine.
Trevor and his son slipped through the hole in the door and entered the temple of Voggoth.
The sounds from outside-motorcycles racing away, guns blazing, artillery shells exploding, and all manner of monsters howling and groaning-disappeared as Trevor and JB entered the temple. The hole in the door remained and the light of fire and lightning flashed but none of it shined into the large chamber, as if some sheath still hung over the blasted door that kept sounds and light at bay.
Father and son entered a great empty space that stretched away forever both across the featureless floor and overhead. A putrid smell carried on the humid air; a smell Trevor knew too well from the cadaver-filled cities in the days after Armageddon.
Two massive orbs broke the blackness of the chamber’s heights. They hung from the hidden ceiling by an unknown mechanism; floating in the void. Each measured hundreds of feet in diameter and appeared made of some clear material such as glass or polystyrene.
“Father…”
At first they were hard to notice due to the colorless background of the temple’s ceiling. But Trevor did see a familiar sight; something he had seen on a parallel Earth.
Inside each orb lived a swirling mass of living black cloud. The creatures pushed against their confinement in an attempt to break loose. Trevor thought he saw the silhouette of faces inside the mist. Screaming, angry faces, but that might be a fantasy conjured by his nightmare memories of the things.
No sound came from their futile efforts to escape but a shimmering halo of energy crackled from the surface of each of the gigantic spheres. That energy-like electricity-arced between the balls like some arcane power source in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory.
For a split second-a blink of the eye-Trevor saw some huge, formless mass lurking between those spheres; something siphoning the energy from the imprisoned Nyx.
In that instant the reality of the situation-or at least as close to it as his simple human mind could comprehend-filled his soul with dread. A shiver ran along his spine; fear as cold and as real as he had sensed since that first day when monsters arrived on Earth.
He had buried thoughts of this moment beneath the battle to get here; beneath a single-mindedness focus on arriving at the objective but he had refused to fully consider what waited at the end of the road.
Voggoth.
For years he contemplated the nature of this entity. The thing that had orchestrated his torture, the invasion, the mutation of millions of human beings, the collapse of civilization. The puppet master pulling the strings of the Gods.
“Father-it is very cold in here. Very empty.”
Trevor felt insignificant standing there in the massive hall filled with nothing. He did not feel like a conquering Emperor or a hero for a species. He felt like a lonely, weak, meaningless man. Nothing more. An overwhelming urge to turn and run nearly overcame his senses; nearly sent him into a blind panic. But just when that feeling neared critical mass, he felt the hand of his son grab his hand.
His heart continued to beat at a fast clip; each exhale nearly turned into a gasp, but Trevor held his ground.
Barely audible above the crackle of energy, Trevor heard a rhythmic click, click, click.. The sound of footsteps moving across the darkness. Louder. Louder.
A human form materialized from the dark and approached at a slow pace. Trevor saw the outline of a man dressed in casual clothes and strolling forward as easily as a favorite son coming home to a welcoming family. With each step the stranger took, Trevor saw he was no stranger at all.
“Hello, Trev.”
The face-the hair-a voice that lingered on the edge of a joke with each word. Trevor recognized it all despite not having seen Danny Washburn since the first winter of the invasion, nearly eleven years, when his friend had disappeared into a hellish vortex on the grounds of SUNY Binghamton.
“What’s wrong? Not happy to see a familiar face?”
Trevor remembered sending Danny and Bird and several others on a mission to destroy one of the gateways, one that belonged to Voggoth’s realm. Danny had constructed a fertilizer bomb onboard an 18-wheeler. While Nina’s group distracted the gateway’s guardians, Danny and Bird delivered the bomb. It exploded, despite the sudden materialization of a Goat Walker.
To his surprise, the Gateway did not simply vaporize in the blast. Instead, the detonation created a screaming whirlpool of reality, sucking away everything in the event horizon to someplace different.
Danny had pleaded for help. Trevor did nothing.
“I can understand why you’re not so thrilled to see me,” the body of Danny Washburn said. “I guess you probably managed to forget about ol’ Danny after all this time.”
“Father, who is this man?”
“Dan-Danny?”
“Yep, old Danny. Your pal. You stood back and watched me get dragged to Hell. But hey, I guess it was all part of the equation, right? Sacrifice some for the good of the whole, isn’t that how you do things?”
“Trevor! Help us for Christ’s sake! You can’t leave us! Trevor! Help me! Help me!”
It seemed as if that horrible day happened all over again. He could hear the cries for help. He could see the spinning vortex first distorting then pulling in Danny Washburn and the rest of the team-and then disappearing, leaving behind a hole in the Earth that slowly turned white as a raging snow storm rushed to fill the scar.
“There was nothing I could have done,” Trevor mumbled in a daze.
“Well, of course not. I mean, you have to believe that or how would you be able to sleep? But, say, who cares. That’s what all of us have been for, right? Me, Reverend Johnny, Tolbert, Bird, Sheila Evans, Sal Corso, Garrett McAllister-we’re all Trevor Stone’s toy soldiers to be thrown into the meat grinder. An expendable resource. But as long as those armies are on the march it’s all for the greater good.”
Trevor turned his head away from Danny and studied the hard floor as if answers might lurk there.
“I do what I have to do.”
”How easy that is to say,” the voice of Danny Washburn replied. “Tell me, Trevor, did you have to crucify those Chaktaw bodies? What purpose did that serve? Was that something you had to do? Or was it something you wanted to do.”
“I–I don’t know…”
“Don’t lie. Don’t stand here in front of your son and lie about who you are. You’re a tyrant. A conqueror. It’s in your blood.”
“I fight to save my people,” Trevor still refused to meet Danny’s eyes.
“Did the Trevor of that parallel Earth fight to save his people? No. He was an invader. He killed for fun. He ruled with an iron fist. He used Nina as his plaything. And guess what, buddy, he was the exact same as you. The same hair color, the same eyes, the same height. The same DNA. You’re a killer, Trevor.”
“My father is not a killer!”
Danny said, “Ask the people of New Winnabow.”
“I had to-“
“You had to send your canine army to tear them to pieces? The great leader showed his wisdom by choosing slaughter! What about the Governor of California? You remember, the one you murdered with a missile strike. How did you justify that?”
“We-we had to destroy their leadership. If any part remained it would have-“
“It would have clouded your mission. It would have brought a voice of dissent to the table and you dared not have that. Nothing must stand in the way of the war. No negotiation. No quarter. Just slaughter without end and Trevor Stone ruling over it all.”
Trevor felt weak. With each word he saw the faces, the aftermath, the ruins of those who had met their fate by his hand.
“Congratulations, Trevor. Genghis Kahn and Alexander the Great have nothing on you!”
“I had no choice!” Trevor yelled and his voice echoed through the endless chamber. The pulses of energy from the spheres containing the inky-black Nyx crackled loud like a blast of lightning and thunder. “The stakes were too high! All of the world on my shoulders!”
“Poor Trevor, no choice at all…”
Trevor’s yell turned to a sob, “I never wanted this! None of it. I did not choose this path. I–I…”
Trevor clasped his head with both hands. The body of Danny Washburn stepped closer like a shark in blood-scented waters lunging for the kill.
“I can release you from it all. I can make the guilt and the pain go away. Old Danny boy knows a few secrets, you see. You listen to me, Trev, and I can make it right as rain.”
“Father!” Jorgie pointed at Danny and shouted, “Don’t listen to him! He is empty, Father! He is as empty and dead as everything in this place!”
As he shouted, the nine year old boy-without realizing it-stepped in Washburn’s direction. In that moment, the thing that looked like Danny Washburn grew a scowl on his face and hurriedly retreated a step. In fear.
Trevor witnessed that fear. Everything changed.
“I can make it all right for you, Trevor. Do what I ask and I promise you, no more pain. I can do more than save your people, I can make them immortal. I can make you immortal, Trevor.”
But the bribe felt flat. Trevor had seen the thing falter in the face of a little boy and with that falter, the creature wearing the cloak of Danny Washburn lost its power to bully or persuade.
“Is that what you tell all the races? How many ears have you whispered that promise into? I’ll bet you told the Feranites they were special, that you would help them. How did that work out?
Washburn glanced from Trevor to Jorgie and said, “Are you sure you don’t want to listen to my offer, Trevor? Say, maybe I can even throw in the woman you love. Oh, I’m sorry, the boy doesn’t know, does he? He doesn’t know that you don’t love his mother.”
“Shut up!” Jorgie hurried to his father’s side and grabbed hold. “You aren’t real! You’re a phony!”
“How does that feel, little one? I bet it scares you. I bet you would do anything to keep your father and mother together. You need them to love each other. Nothing can stand in the way of that: no one. Especially not another woman who isn’t Mommy. You’d do anything to keep your parents together because if Mommy and Daddy don’t love each other, maybe they don’t love you, either.”
Trevor felt his strength return in no small part from the hug of his son. His jagged breath eased. The wobble in his legs steadied.
“It’s okay, Jorgie. You’re right, don’t listen to him,” Trevor wiped his hand across his eyes as if clearing his view. “Truth is, he’s powerless.”
“Powerless?” Washburn’s voice shook in the slightest. “I have more power than you can comprehend. I am eternal. You are frail and inferior.”
“You are nothing,” Trevor insisted and he recalled words Lori Brewer once used. “Power is never taken, it is given. You have only the power that the others have given to you.”
“Leave!” Washburn ordered. “Leave now and maybe you’ll live a while longer.”
“You’re the one who is going to leave. You’re the one who doesn’t belong here.”
“You sound so sure of yourself, Trevor. Do you really think your little surprise army means anything to me? I’m not the Hivvans. I’m not the Duass. I don’t have to play by the rules, Trevor. I wrote those rules.”
The thing that wore Danny Washburn’s body glanced up at the crackling energy between the two orbs. The power there grew to a frenzy. Glowing, shimmering tendrils reached from one of the spheres across to the other. The clouds of black inside writhed back and forth in pain.
Strands of energy intertwined and formed a glowing image. In that image Trevor saw the waterfront of a modern city. It took him a moment, but he recognized post-Armageddon Seattle with blasted buildings, abandoned cars, and debris strewn across the streets.
On those streets slithered over-sized snakes with metal fins along their spine; large ape-things with a cluster of spider eyes and four arms; glowing red worms the size of a city bus with barbed ribs along their sickening body; and legions of other nightmares.
“I can summon infinite reinforcements. I can reach back through the time line of this universe and grab what I need…” the creatures disappeared. No flash. No slow fade. Just wiped from existence. “…from a time that would not have served me. And deposit them here.”
The view shifted to outside the temple. From the brief glimpse afforded in the pool of energy, Trevor saw the European force driving across the black plain with piles of dead monsters before them. Clearly a victory in the making.
Then blobs of green appeared in their path. The monsters of Seattle from a time past emerged from the vessels and took to battle immediately. The human strike faltered and split then withdrew; a victory turned back.
“That was easy, Trevor. No limit. Nothing to stop me.”
This time the image between the orbs showed Grand Forks, North Dakota. The Red River had climbed its banks and flooded most of downtown. The western stretches of the city, however, were flooded with a different catastrophe: hordes of demons, some walking upright, others crawling or flying. Angry, snarling beasts that sought prey not for sustenance but by impulse; an impulse to inflict pain. To destroy for destruction’s sake.
They disappeared from Grand Forks, leaving it exactly as The Empire would find it a few weeks later: half-flooded and fully deserted.
The army of beasts re-materialized outside the temple walls in blobs of green from which they quickly burst forth and joined the battle. The Europeans were forced wholly off the plain and sent scrambling to the west.
“Go. Take your-take your son with you. Go into seclusion and never return. You may live out the end of your sad existence without interference from me.”
Trevor tilted his head and studied the body of Danny Washburn. The demonstration of power did not intimidate Trevor. In fact, it had the opposite effect. Trevor now knew his choice to confront Voggoth had been the right choice. He knew because history demanded fulfillment; a circle waited to be closed.
“We’re not going anywhere. I came here for you.”
“You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
“I know exactly what you are. You’re the rot that remains when something living decays. You’re the after-birth of the big bang; a side effect of the creation of the universe. You come from some void where you’ve been since before time. And you’ve watched us. You’ve watched the living. You’ve watched species rise from bits of bio mass into mighty civilizations and that scares you. Ever-changing, getting better, improving with each generation.”
“You wither and die. I am eternal.”
“You are stagnant! You never change. Since the moment you existed you have been all that you will ever be. And you look out from your void and see life flourishing and growing and experiencing the universe. You are filled with nothing but envy and hate. That’s why your ‘children’ are cruel and vicious; that’s their purpose, to punish life. That’s why you tortured me for the sake of torture. And that is all you have to offer: violence and misery.”
The thing that looked like Danny Washburn answered, “I am filled with envy and hate? Look at your ‘evolving’ life-look at your species. You divide into sub-groups of race and culture, always searching for reasons to call your own superior; better.”
“And that’s how you’ve done it, right? You tapped into the dark nature of each of the races and used it to your advantage. You are a master manipulator and with your bag of parlor tricks you’ve convinced them that your sad corner of existence is some kind of immortal paradise; that you are a king-maker that can bring all manner of wonders if they are worthy, when the truth is that you are no more than a cast out.”
The image of Dallas, Texas appeared in the energy current between the spheres. Another batch of creatures disappeared from the past and re-appeared in the present.
Danny Washburn’s voice warned, “Soon your species will be wiped from time and space. Or belong to me.”
“That’s the only way for you. You can’t reproduce or evolve, so you conquer and subvert. You turn the living into the soulless dead. The only way you can expand your reach is by convincing the others to submit to you. Like I said, a master manipulator. But your puppets made a mistake last year, didn’t they?”
“You are wasting your time. Go now, or I will kill you.”
Jorgie scrunched close to his father who slung an arm around his boy’s shoulder. Trevor ignored the threat and continued, “A little of that good old human greed and ambition remained in those you mutated, enough so that your Missionary Man wanted to earn your favor. Taking me-that was for your amusement. You’ve been obsessed with hurting me since this began. But you did not count on my son. When the force of life inside this child’s body touched the great machines of Voggoth, what happened?”
“Go now!”
“He took control. He manipulated your tools. Life proved superior!”
Jorgie chimed in, “It was empty! YOU are empty!”
The thing that resembled Danny Washburn nearly glowed red with anger. Its eyes bulged to inhuman size. Its arms flailed in the air. And in a voice that cried out from the void it screamed, “I am older than the first atom of the universe! I am eternal! I-am- a GOD!”
The body of Danny Washburn erupted and the thing hiding inside grew like an airbag exploding from a dashboard. It filled the room in a second, stretching from one side to the other of the massive hall; towering high between the two glowing orbs of enslaved Nyx.
A giant mass; a mountain of creature not quite solid, not quite liquid. A brown and black building-sized alien organism from the darkest hole of all existence. Its surface rippled and the faces of a trillion swallowed souls pushed against the flesh from the inside out, wailing a chorus composed by the devil himself.
The energy from the orbs filled the chamber in a brilliant glow. The giant creature hovered above father and son.
Voggoth.