Beyond Armageddon V: Fusion (56 page)

In tight streets to either side of the highway the Ghouls met the fire of human soldiers. Those soldiers wore a variety of uniforms and some wore only street clothes but they all faced the onrush without flinching. Assault rifles
rat-tat-tatted
and grenades burst.

Freckle-faced Benny Duda oversaw the first contact of the day from the Richmond Heights City Hall building. His soldiers—the 4
^th
Mechanized Infantry Brigade—met the enemy vanguard with machine guns, carbines, and well-positioned explosives as well as a formation of Bradley Fighting vehicles positioned east of the mine field on I-64. Their heavy guns decimated any Ghouls that survived the mines.

Woody “Bear” Ross assumed command over the St. Louis region when Shepherd went north with Brewer to meet Voggoth’s northern prong. His voice came to Duda over the radio as Benny cradled a scoped M4 against his shoulder from the roof of city hall. His vantage point provided a great view of the interstate and surrounds.

“Benny, what’s your status?”

“Kinda busy, Bear,” and Benny squeezed the trigger adding the sound of his rifle to the chorus of bullets.

Outside of the City Hall building and across South Big Bend Boulevard twisted an on-ramp descending around a grassy field in a long north to northeast curve en route to the Interstate. A trio of Ghouls left I-64 and climbed that gentle slope with the aim of charging a mortar team operating in the city hall parking lot. Duda’s slug tore the head off one of the fiends .

“Benny, give me a sit-rep
now.”

Captain Duda fired another shot that missed but a machine gunner positioned at a first floor window several stories below managed to stave off the attack on the mortar team for the moment, giving them time to launch another series of shells onto the highway full of creatures:
thwump
—BOOM.
Thwump
—BOOM.

Duda growled in frustration as he radioed Ross, “We’re getting hit right now. Looks like the Ghouls are cannon fodder. They took out the mines and are still coming.”

Benny raised his rifle and fired a quick series of shots at another group of Ghouls compelled to attack City Hall. The first two bullets missed. The third winged one of the things and put it out of effective action. The downstairs machine gun fired again; once more stopping an assault. Duda knew it would not be long before the mass of Ghouls would overwhelm the position.

Worse, from his vantage point he spied about twenty Mutants on hover-bikes moving among the homes on Lindbergh Drive a quarter mile south as if to flank his forward positions. A Humvee hurried to intercept; its .50 caliber mounted gun fired furiously. The Mutants returned fire with their oversized and very loud flintlock-style fire arms.

“Listen, Bear,” Duda transmitted. “We’re going to have to fall back real soon unless you can send us some reinforcements—hold on sec…”

The Mutants trying to flank Duda’s troops to the south stopped advancing and not merely because the Humvee killed several of their number. In fact, the bikers turned and sped off from whence they came as if their asses had suddenly caught on fire.

Duda gave his attention to the highway. The minefield had stopped exploding. The Ghouls passing through halted their advance and also fled west.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he mumbled.

Had their defense spooked the invaders? Had their resolve forced Voggoth to rethink his line of attack?

“No,” he said aloud as the truth hit him. “All 4
^th
Mech units and anyone in the vicinity of Richmond Heights, take cover. I repeat, take cover. Big Bad Wolf is knocking at the door.”

The skyscraper-tall Leviathan stepped forward. Its right foot—something like a clawed elephant’s foot—smashed down on the ultra-modern Civic Center built just off the interstate. Swarms of Ghouls at the front of the advance withdrew west to either side of the gigantic monster where the rest of the St. Louis-bound army waited.

Its slug-like body shimmied and a sound similar to a forlorn air raid siren came from the innards of the Leviathan. The miserable black clouds twisted and turned as the monstrosity gulped air at a rapid pace. As it did, sacs popped up all along its sick skin like boils. The tendons holding the main body to the legs stretched as its belly filled.

Duda raced from the roof with his command staff and descended the stairwells of City Hall. All across the front his soldiers broke for the cover of basements, storm drains, and pre-built shelters. The Bradleys on the Interstate drove east as fast as their engines could go.

The siren-sound stopped. The Leviathan bent forward; stooped, it seemed. A brilliant flash of lightning danced through the heavens chased by a magnificent clap of thunder.

The Leviathan fired a blast of supersonic wind that outraced its own sound. The deadly gust projected out in a cone with Interstate 64 at its center. Every manmade structure—almost exclusively residential homes—between Ethel Avenue a thousand feet to the north and Arlington Drive to the south evaporated into tiny pieces.

Benny Duda—huddled in a restroom in the basement of City Hall—felt the entire building above fall apart like a sand castle in a hurricane. The pressure burst one of his ear drums and would have sucked him away if not for his death-grip on a drain pipe. Two of the other four soldiers huddled with him in the basement fared worse. They went aloft and broke apart into bits before they could even scream.

The sound of the blast came just as the worst of the wind passed; a low howl so deep it made the ground vibrate and played a dull hum on the pipes in the ceiling-less bathroom.

Then it stopped.

Duda—his right hand planted firmly on his burst ear—staggered to what remained of the stairwell. He knew the Ghouls and Mutants would come next, sweeping in and ripping apart the survivors. He had little time to escape and, with his equipment destroyed, could only hope that any of his men who survived the wind would be smart enough to retreat downtown.

As he reached the top of the stairs he paused.

The land had been swept clean. Nothing higher than foundation-level remained of Richmond Heights. The explosive gust covered everything in a dune of dirt like a brown snowdrift. With the exception of a handful of stumps, every tree had been uprooted with an efficiency the most talented landscapers would envy. Slabs of concrete had actually peeled away from the highway.

He glanced east and saw the remains of the wind dying down like a dust storm losing steam. Pieces of Richmond Heights settled over the St. Louis suburbs a mile to the east.

Duda turned his attention west. And froze.

Contrary to past encounters, the Leviathan did not return to standing position. Instead, the massive maw remained fixed on the battleground as if admiring the destruction. With the landscape laid flat, Benny could see the Ghouls, Mutants, warped-Feranites, and Roachbots of the force holding in check.

“What the hell?”

Then it started again. That siren sound. Except this time the Leviathan did not draw breath from the heavens. Instead, a great suction swept from east to west and into the maw of the titan as if racing to fill a great vacuum.

Another dust storm formed, this one churning
toward
Voggoth’s pet with incredible force. The shards of shattered houses, the twisted remains of guard rails, crushed cars, overturned armored military vehicles, chunks of concrete, the remains of the 4
^th
Mechanized Infantry Brigade, and Captain Benny Duda flew through the air as the Leviathan gulped them like a musket loading shot.

The sound stopped. Then the Leviathan fired again with not only wind, but the shrapnel of people and things. Yet nothing remained to destroy; nothing for the supersonic gust to knock over.

Once the wind slowed and the fine grains of debris that had been a town and its defenders drifted to earth in a coating of brown, black, and red dust, the army of Voggoth marched forward once more. A wave of mechanical Roachbots joined the Ghouls and Mutants at the front of the army aimed at down town St. Louis.

23. Time Redux

Voggoth filled the chamber, rising between the two containment orbs where the Nix squirmed and boiled sending energy bolts between them. The universe’s original monster towered above father and son. The threats and words of discouragement spoken through the lips of Danny Washburn gone; replaced by a gigantic writhing mountain of venom and anger.

Trevor retreated a step, shocked by the creature in the temple that came as close to Voggoth’s true form as the physical universe would allow. The surface of the thing shimmied as if liquid, yet held together as if solid. He could not comprehend its composition except knowing with a certainty in his soul that the being before him was comprised as much of hatred as any form of matter.

In an instant, Trevor knew he had miscalculated. Too horrible. Too powerful. Too alien in every sense of the word. His instincts screamed
run, run, run!
but the image of Voggoth so disorientated his puny human mind that he could not move. His body locked in inaction; his thoughts scrambled with fear and revulsion.

Voggoth did—nothing.

The mountainous mass postured as if preparing to roll over the petty humans—tendrils sprouted, uncurled and threatened to strike—but did not.

The skin—if that’s what it could be called—of the devil rolled and bubbled; faces of countless victims pushed from beneath as if begging release. But the master of Armageddon did not strike.

Jorgie Benjamin Stone—the nine year old boy holding a stuffed animal—stepped toward Voggoth.

Trevor found an anchor to reality in his son. He squinted his eyes and focused on JB, ignoring everything else in the chamber as best he could. And while the synapses of his mind continued to misfire, Trevor managed to see what happened with enough clarity to understand.

“You—are—empty,” the child said in a plain, matter-of-fact voice that resonated in Trevor’s thought process like a huge stone splashing into a stream of confusion.

“Jorgie,” Trevor mumbled with the aim of telling his son to ‘stay back’. But he stopped the warning as he saw the false-God tremble at the boy’s approach.

That current of disorientation inside Trevor’s head abated. The confusion—the fear—the revulsion dissipated because they were never real. Just another parlor trick from the master manipulator: the only cards Voggoth could play in the universe of the living.

JB dropped his plush bunny. The rabbit and its tightly-wrapped blanket fell to the temple floor. With both arms free, Jorgie lunged at Voggoth, reaching with open hands.

“I am life,” he said with an obstinate tone worthy of the most stubborn child.

His human flesh touched the abomination. Life collided with anti-life. The energy of the living rushed to fill the void. The giant shivered. A flash came from the point of contact. Jagged bolts of power engulfed the massive entity and conducted across its being and merged with the forces emanating from the captive Nyx.

Trevor stepped toward his son as those waves of energy engulfed the boy. But while Voggoth shriveled and thrashed as if trying to escape, Jorgie basked in the light of the discharge. The touch had released a power within. A power that overwhelmed the monster and engulfed the orbs above.

An image of perfect black—of someplace devoid of light—formed in the vortex between the contained Nyx. The false-god collapsed upon itself, spinning and shrinking and finally slipping out of the universe, chased from the world of the living by the touch of a child.

“Jorgie! Jorgie!”

Energy crackled around JB, stretching to the temple heights in continuous bolts and surrounding the pair of spheres up there. Those spheres splintered and fell apart. The oily-black Nyx escaped, stretching toward the boy like predators leaping at prey.

Trevor’s son kept his hands aloft. Energy filled the temple, forcing his father to drop to the ground and cover his head. That energy stopped the diving Nyx in mid-air. The cloud-creatures froze in place, captured again not by a physical barrier but by the force radiating from Jorgie.

“Father! I can feel it, Father! I am—I am becoming whole…”

Trevor took to a knee and gazed with wide-eyed wonder at the power his son wielded. The energy strands between the creatures formed a bridge again, and once more images of the past played.

“It’s still open, Father.”

Jorgie did not appear in pain, but a look of stress draped over the boy’s face, as if he held aloft a great weight but one supported by his mind, not muscles.

The Nyx struggled against these new bonds but could not gain freedom.

“He was taking from before, Father—reaching back and bringing his monsters here—he was
cheating,
Father. He was breaking the rules!”

The portal in the buzzing lines of energy opened to a waterfront of shops and restaurants and the baseball stadium named Camden Yards. The city of Baltimore. Those storefronts and parks teemed with monsters from the void. Trevor remembered Reverend Johnny finding and exterminating one of The Order’s outposts in that city.

Trevor realized—given another moment Voggoth would have pulled those monsters from Baltimore and deposited them outside the temple as reinforcements for the ongoing battle. Shepherd and Johnny would have found nothing; just like his Generals had found empty cities in Cincinnati, Oklahoma City, Dallas, and Grand Forks when they had expected to find hordes of Voggoth’s forces.