World War Cthulhu Page 14

  “Any of you hurt?”

  Sizabantu pointed to one of the smallest boys, who had a deep wound on his leg, the source of the blood they had been following. “Ngqobile got cut by the exploding drum.”

  Peel moved forward and checked the laceration. It was deep and bleeding fast. He took his first-aid kit, wiped down the cut with iodine, and used strip bandages to hold the wound in place. Peel took a tube of skin glue he always carried for emergencies, and sealed the wound.

  “Can you walk, Ngqobile?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “I’m going to carry you, okay?”

  He nodded, so Peel lifted him. The boy was lighter than he expected; malnourished, most likely. That would make his work easier and his hatred for Nambutu stronger.

  “We head for that granite dome. We should find cover there.”

  They took off at a brisk pace, and Peel was relieved to see that everyone kept up. He counted their number at eleven. If he could save these eleven children, then he would have done some good this day.

  Peel heard the Mil Mi-24 helicopter gunship before he saw it, flying low from the northeast, from Bulawayo. He could just make out the Air Force of Zimbabwe insignia. It cut through the air fast in their general direction.

  Up on the rise now, scrambling through the granite rocks, Peel could see down into the valley from where they had fled. The creature was also easily visible, rising above the tree line with its head of thrashing tentacles, about a kilometer from them now. It moved with alarming speed, faster than their Jeep could drive, and the undergrowth did nothing to slow it. It still hunted.

  The gunship flew low in the direction of the monster. It fired a high explosive anti-tank missile—not at the creature as Peel had hoped—but near it, sending the scrub into a torrent of energetic flames. The creature moved away from the heat, toward Peel’s location.

  Colonel Nambutu was herding it toward them.

  Peel readjusted his grip on the uncomplaining Ngqobile and picked up the pace. The rise they headed to was sharp and wide. If they could get over the rocks, perhaps the creature would be too cumbersome to follow them, and they could escape.

  Meanwhile the gunship fired another missile, closer this time, to inform the creature they meant business. It had the desired effect, forcing the Dark Young to move toward Peel and his group.

  What the gunship didn’t expect was the range of its tentacles, and one whipped out faster than Peel could register. It smashed the Mi-24 with enough force to crumble the cabin.

  The gunship fell like a rock out of the sky. The overhead blades, still spinning, sliced at the offending tentacle, severing it and the monster screamed with many mouths in unison. Peel had never heard a sound so chilling.

  Neither the crew nor the gunship could survive the incineration on impact with the savanna forest. The creature, however, did.

  Peel’s gut went cold; a wall of fire and a monster on one side, a high rise rocky peak on the other. Then the creature trotted toward them. It had nowhere else to go, and the scent of their flesh had caught its attention.

  “Run!” Peel bellowed with all the volume he could muster.

  The group split, scrambled up the rounded granite rocks. The closer they reached the peak, the steeper the track climbed. Peel lost his M4A1 without remembering when, and Ngqobile seemed heavier with each step. He checked his holster, finding the 9mm Glock handgun ready should he need it. He checked for thermite grenades, found three.

  Then Peel had an idea.

  “Run!” he yelled again to the last of the boys he could see, who were ahead of him now. “Get over the rise, head southeast and I’ll come after you.”

  He sat Ngqobile on a rock and caught his breath. His chest hurt with the exhaustion of constant, rapid breathing to oxygenate his complaining muscles, and he wondered again where the hell Ash was right now.

  Peel turned to the small boy. They were alone now. “You should follow your friends.”

  The young boy shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “Your leg still hurt?”

  He nodded.

  Peel nodded too. “Okay, we’ll go together.”

  The sounds of sizable trees being crushed underfoot grew loud as the monster advanced upon them. It could probably smell them: human flesh. Peel appreciated the fear that grazing antelopes faced upon the African savanna; the horror of knowing that in the end their death would be one of being eaten alive. He didn’t want to go out like that.

  Peel took the three grenades, primed them and threw them one by one in a fan pattern. Each detonation created a wall of flames, deterrent enough—he hoped—to send the creature in a different direction.

  “You ready to go again?”

  Ngqobile nodded. He even managed the slightest of smiles. “Thank you,” he said quietly, “for saving us.”

  Overcome with emotion, Peel didn’t know what to say. So he lifted the boy with both hands now, and strode up the steep path. If they could just get over the hill, he kept telling himself, they would survive this.

  All too soon the flames behind them burned out, and the creature advanced again to hunt them.

  Peel wanted to demand that the boy run, but he couldn’t ask that of him. So he pushed harder, until all the muscles in his legs and back screamed for him to rest, and he ignored them.

  He couldn’t find an easy path that led upward, and soon Peel found he was cornered, in a granite ravine where the walls were too steep and too smooth to climb.

  “Fuck!”

  He was going to die. They were both going to die.

  He put Ngqobile down.

  “Are you okay?” the boy asked.

  “We’ll be fine,” Peel lied. “The monster didn’t see us head this way.”

  Then they saw the tentacles, rising above the forest, no more than fifty meters from them. There was a boulder in its way, several dozen meters wide. The creature rolled it out of the way with a single pseudopod as if it was nothing more than a silk curtain blocking its path.

  Peel’s whole body felt like jelly. Normally he had some kind of plan, even a crazy plan, but right now he had nothing, and only seconds to find one if he were to see this day through to its end.

  He had nothing.

  Ngqobile wrapped himself tight around Peel, gripped for life that wasn’t there. “I don’t want to die like this, taken by the devil.”

  The Dark Young advanced. Its hundred nostrils snorting as it sensed them, moved in slowly for a precision kill. The rest of the creature was stationary while the head of tentacles thrashed with the same madness as when it was first released.

  Ngqobile helped Peel take his handgun from the holster, until Peel held the muzzle directly over the young boy’s heart.

  Peel hesitated. He had always promised himself, if he had a choice he would rather take his own life than let an abomination like this one claim him. But never had he expected to have to make this decision for another, and a child at that.

  “DO IT!” the boy screamed, tearing Peel from his melancholy to the horrors about to transpire. The monster was close now; only a dozen meters separated them. Peel felt the creature’s hot breath on him, like the stench of a lion after a feast.

  The boy grabbed Peel’s trigger finger, and the weapon went off. Ngqobile fell lifeless at Peel’s feet as a mist of red sprayed him.

  Shocked, the Australian spy turned toward the monster, placed the hot muzzle against his forehead, and willed himself to pull the trigger.

  But he couldn’t do it.

  He closed his eyes and tried again. There had to be a way out, and suicide was a path open to him.

  And he still couldn’t pull the trigger.

  A blast of heat from an explosion shocked Peel. He opened his eyes and saw the Dark Young on fire, burning from its central mass outward. The tentacles above still thrashed, but with anger and pain now, and a dozen mouths poured out that horrific scream. In that instant, Peel was sure his ear bones shattered.

  He watched E
merson Ash stand from the undergrowth. He dropped the shell of a second RPG-7 and lobbed several grenades into the central burning mass of the creature. He was killing it, slowly, after no one else had been able or willing to do so.

  In a state that felt like slow-motion, Peel lifted his Glock 9mm and fired, every last bullet landing in the creature. He didn’t know if he did any good, but he didn’t want any bullets left over. The bullet and the flesh. He still might do it, kill himself, after the atrocities he had caused. With his weapon depleted, the choice would not be his to make.

  The creature fell, burning like a pyre, and twitched now rather than thrashed. Ash walked up beside Peel and handed him the M4A1 he had dropped earlier. “You’ll need this, mate.”

  Peel nodded, went through the motions of checking, then loading, a round into the chamber. He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t respond. He was going into shock, and even though this realization was clear to him, he couldn’t stop himself from embracing that dark place.

  “Major!” Ash exclaimed. The cyber-analyst looked at the dead boy, then back at Peel again. “You did what you had to do, Major; now let’s get out of here.”

  Peel couldn’t move. His legs wouldn’t respond.

  And then he was sick, dry-retching only because he hadn’t eaten in over twelve hours. Being sick was all he could do to remind himself he was human, so he took his time.

  ***

  Peel and Ash returned to the trucks and discovered a savanna littered with the fleshy remains of human and animal corpses, Zimbabwe National Army soldiers and zebra being the highest amongst the body count. The Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath had been thorough, hunting down all that moved on two or four legs. The ZNA soldiers left protecting the two surviving trucks had not stood a chance; the monster had decimated them quickly and cleanly.

  Peel had never seen so much blood.

  More uncanny, perhaps, were the two trucks themselves. They had not been touched; not even a scratch.

  They advanced with their assault rifles ready, unsure what to expect. Then Ash raised a hand and indicated that Peel should slow. He pointed under the closer of the two trucks, to where a man hid.

  “Come out or I’ll shoot,” Ash commanded.

  “The m-monster?” the man exclaimed.

  “Gone,” Ash answered sharply. “Now move.”

  When the soldier refused to comply Peel fired a bullet into the chassis of the truck, just above the enemy soldier. The man moved quickly then, clambering to his feet with his hands raised high. He was as scuffed, bruised and bloody as Peel and Ash, and just as terrified.

  Peel noticed the insignia on the man’s shoulders. “Colonel Nambutu?” he asked.

  The despot nodded.

  Peel didn’t hesitate and put three bullets into the man’s chest, dropping Nambutu into a rapidly expanding pool of his own blood.

  Ash faced Peel and raised an eyebrow. “That was unexpected.”

  “Do you have a problem with it?” Peel asked in all seriousness.

  “I promised you could have him,” said Ash.

  Peel stepped forward over the twitching corpse. Just to make sure, he put three bullets into the man’s head and shattered the skull and the brains inside until it became a pulped mess of meat.

  He had hoped to feel better, killing Colonel Nambutu, but he felt nothing. He couldn’t remove the image of Ngqobile’s last pained expression as he pulled Peel’s finger on the trigger. He couldn’t stop analyzing that he was more willing to let one of those monsters take his life than take his own. Killing the Colonel had done nothing to silence the darkness within him. Revenge was a hollow promise.

  “Major, we should check the trucks,” said Ash quietly. “Find out why they were untouched.”

  The former Australian Army officer nodded and the two men peered cautiously into the back of the first, and then second of the trucks. There were six oil drums in each, each coupled with magnetic-field-generating batteries.

  “We should destroy these,” said Ash.

  Peel nodded through the dark fog that clouded his mind.

  “I guessed that creature sensed more of its own, either afraid to hurt them or wary of more predators taking over its patch.

  Unsure how to respond, Peel searched the trucks’ inventories and the corpses, gathering grenades and explosives, enough to set up a large detonation in each truck. In the vehicle they had toppled earlier, they discovered an additional four barrels. Together he and Ash packed the explosives into three clumps around each truck’s fuel tank.

  Hours passed before they completed their work and stood far back, ready to run should they need to. The goal was to destroy, not release the creatures, but they would only know which it was when they executed their plan.

  “Ready?” Ash asked.

  Peel nodded.

  Ash lifted his weapon, stared down the sights, and shot the first petrol tank. The explosion was loud, hot, and intense, and it sent the second nearby truck into an all-consuming fireball. Ash fired one more shot, incinerating the first truck they had toppled earlier that morning.

  Peel and Ash stared down their scopes, ready for more of the horrors to materialize from the flames, but none did: they had caught them early.

  They marched from the scene of carnage. Their work was done.

  ***

  After consuming some rations, rehydrating, pulling forgotten thorns from their flesh, and cleaning their wounds, Peel and Ash marched again. They picked up the trail of the former child soldiers, followed them across the granite dome rise, and headed southwest toward Botswana.

  Upon the peak, with the sun setting ahead of them, the two Australians stared down at the carnage they had been party too. Peel couldn’t believe they had survived, and wondered if he had deserved to.

  He shook his head at the thought, hating it. He couldn’t let negative chatter get the better of him, because that was the path of madness. But he needed an action to undertake to appease his soul because revenge was not the answer. Otherwise he wasn’t certain he would survive this day with any mental fortitude left in him.

  “Africa’s beautiful.” Ash stated it as if it were a matter of official record. “If you don’t count those corpses over there, and those flames, and that blast site … oh, and the corpse of the creature … and …”

  Peel could see Ash trying hard not to laugh, and the man was right, because all they could see before them was the carnage and aftermath of battle. Nothing majestic about it at all.

  “Mate, shut the fuck up,” Peel muttered.

  “Is that an order, sir?” Ash almost chuckled.

  Peel sensed the man was relieved Peel was finally talking again.

  Peel wanted to laugh too. He really did. He wanted the world to go back to the way it was before today, when he didn’t have the blood of children on his hands.

  “Damn straight it’s an order.”

  He felt a sharp object rub against his leg, and he remembered the diamond he’d recovered earlier. He’d forgotten that he had a hundred thousand dollars in his pocket.

  “Sergeant?”

  “Yes, Major?”

  “You think we can catch those boys before the border?”

  Ash grinned. “Sure.”

  Peel smiled, an action he thought he’d never be capable of again, but he had been wrong. Redemption came not from spilled blood, but offering possibility to deserving others.

  “Let’s go, then. I have something very important I need to give those boys to help them on their way.”

  BROADSWORD

  BY WILLIAM MEIKLE

  “Broadsword calling Danny Boy, come in please, over.”

  I let go of the button on the mike and waited. There was still nothing on the line but hiss and crackle.

  “Broadsword calling Danny Boy, come in please, over.”

  “Leave it, Sandy,” Captain Dave Collins said. “It’s the mountains getting in the way. We’ll try again at higher ground.”

  I looked up the Trollenberg. The top w
as obscured by thick cloud, and I had a bad feeling that was refusing to go away. Whatever waited up there, it wasn’t going to go well for us.

  The captain seemed to have no such qualms. He hefted his rucksack and started off along the tree line to our left. I packed up the radio, strapped it on my back, retrieved my rifle from where I’d leaned it against a tree, and trudged after him.

  It had already been a long haul; we had come across the Swiss-German border after midnight and walked all night—ten miles through high passes in thick snow just to get to the foot of the mountain. My feet felt like frozen lead, my shoulders ached from the weight of the radio, and the blinding white all around had brought on a headache like an ice pick stabbing behind my left eye. But I couldn’t falter—not now that we were so close.

  Our future depends on it.

  That’s what they told us when they hauled us off our exercise on Dartmoor and laid on a train, just for the two of us, to get us first to London, then Biggin Hill airfield. I knew it was something big when the Brigadier himself was on hand to brief us.

  “A bit of a flap on, lads,” he said. “Winnie’s had an ultimatum—stop fighting, or we all die—bit of a rum do if you ask me, but the brass are taking it seriously. What you’re about to see is so hush-hush you can never tell anyone, and if you do, it’ll be denied at the highest levels.”

  A projector whirred into life, the lights went down, and a flickering image came into life on the wall. Winnie was front and center, standing behind his desk. A pale, nebulous thing seemed to hang in the air in front of him. It was almost formless, pulsing in and out of vision every few seconds as if the camera could not quite catch it. It seemed composed of strange angles, misshapen and grotesque. I saw wings and claws, too many arms and not enough heads; there was only a fleshy pyramid of quivering tissue where a face might have been. It was an impossibility, as faint as a ghost but, if the picture was to be believed, it was most definitely there. It spoke, heavily accented, and lisping so thickly so as to almost obscure the words completely. But I caught the meaning well enough.