Through the hail of gunfire, Shmoo was convinced he heard a familiar voice cry “Help!” He raised his fist, and ordered a cease-fire.
“Galley Slave 330? Hana? Is that you?” Shmoo called out across the battlefield. A moment later, the form of the galley slave came into view around the corner of the bullet-scored dumpster, arms raised, with a gun barrel pointed at her head. Another voice could be heard behind her.
“So here’s what we’re going to do,” Aleiki was holding Gisiebob’s empty gun to Hana’s head. “You let us go, and we let her live.”
Hana twitched, and whispered to Aleiki. “You promised me! You can’t send me back! You can’t-”
“Shut up!” Aleiki prodded the girl’s skull with the gun barrel. “I look out for my own first. I appreciate your help escaping, but you’re not worth me dying for, sorry.” She looked to Gisiebob. “You remember the route?” He nodded.
Shmoo’s voice echoed across the eerily silent ground. He sounded conflicted. “What promise do I have that she won’t be harmed?”
Well, we’re out of bullets, for one thing… Aleiki thought to herself. “We’ll let her go once we’re a safe distance away. Don’t follow-”
“Grayson!” Hana called out, ignoring the guidelines that required her to refer to freemen as ‘Master.’ “Don’t listen to her, they’re out of-”
Aleiki slammed the butt of her gun into Hana’s teeth, but it was too late. She and Gisiebob ran even as the Proto-American forces swarmed forward, shooting once more. Hana dropped to her knees, holding her mouth, crying, as the soldiers swarmed past her.
Only Shmoo stopped. “Wait here.” Not a request, it was an order, from an uncaring master to a slave. “We’ll return when they’re dead.” And then he was up and gone, after the fleeing survivors.
*****************************************************************
Loki lay on his back, wheezing. He couldn’t feel his left arm, the Captain must have mashed the nerves. He could feel his cracked ribs, and wished he couldn’t. He was dimly aware of the Captain standing over him, seeing if he would try to get up again.
He wasn’t sure he could. He had never been beaten so thoroughly in his life. The world seemed to fade between blackness and a kind of red twilight as he tried to focus on something, anything.
The Captain was talking….saying something. Something important? Maybe. It didn’t really seem to matter anymore.
It had taken less than seven minutes for the fight to be over. After the beating he’d taken earlier, he was simply no match for the ruthless efficiency of the Captain’s fury. The man seemed immune to pain, and fought like a demon.
His doppelganger’s words drifted into his consciousness. “Is that it? This is all you can offer me?” He seemed to be angry that Loki wouldn’t get up. “Is that all?” He delivered another kick into Loki’s ribs.
Loki hardly felt it, he was awash in a sea of pain already, this was just another drop. He chuckled, imagining himself drifting, floating on his back in a pool of blood….
Another kick. Evidently the Captain did not find his laughter humorous.
****************************************************************
“Okay, great. Death, destruction, chaos…yada yada yada. What do you want us to do about it?” Donovan crossed his arms. Nyarlathotep did not appear amused, despite his unwavering smile. “We’re going back to our own time anyway, and none of this will ever have happened.”
“You really believe that time can be altered so easily?” Donovan noticed suddenly that Nyarlathotep’s mouth didn’t move when he spoke.
“Well….yeah.” He replied lamely.
Asraiah spoke. “Whether it can or not, we have to try. We don’t want this to happen anymore than you do.”
“What you fail to comprehend is that this has already happened. These holes in the universe have already opened, fixing this as a solid point in the omniverse. This moment will always exist in the fourth and fifth dimensions, a waypoint between times and spaces and realities. All that will change is the surrounding terrain.”
“So….” Asraiah thought for a moment. “No matter what we do, these portals will still open in ten years? Even if we keep the ARG compound from being built here?”
Nyarlathotep nodded. Asraiah looked at Donovan. “Well…shit.”
Nyarlathotep nodded once more, before continuing. “Which is why I’m here. I have a gift for you, which will aid you greatly at the right time.” And with that, he placed a hand on Donovan’s head.
Loki and Dead Man stepped forward and caught Donovan as he fell. Asraiah jumped as the sirens and the screaming and the sloshing resumed, and the world came back to life.
“What happened to him?” Loki yelled, as Dead Man hefted Donovan’s unconscious form over his shoulder. Nyarlathotep was nowhere to be seen. Asraiah shook her head, and dashed towards the portal, so very close, not twenty feet away. And as she curled into a ball to dive through it’s surface, she heard the computer voice chiming…
“Reality sterilization to commence in one min-”
Loki stared after her, into the portal. They were going home!
*****************************************************************
Gisiebob started as Asraiah shot out of the orb she’d disappeared into not ten seconds before, but now miraculously free of cuts. The eyepatched girl rolled to a stop on the floor, laughing hysterically, and collapsed, spread-eagled and panting.
Loki came next, then Aleiki, Donovan, Dead Man, Valdor…and a hobo?
Gisiebob wasn’t entirely sure what was going on. He let out a startled “Ack!” as Loki hugged him, everyone laughing, laughing until they couldn’t breath, laughing with relief as Gisiebob pressed a key and the portal collapsed, sealing them off from the nightmare future.
Home.
******************************************************************
Captain Loki strode to the bridge of his ship, leaving the battered corpse of his adversary behind, and rebuttoning his uniform jacket as he crossed the threshold. He had beaten the other so badly that he’d been unable to extract any information before his death, but at least he was dead.
“Navigational Offic…” He drifted off as he stared out the window, and observed a massive steel warehouse, smouldering from the inside. “Where the hell are we?”
And somewhere deep underground, a computerized voice proclaimed, to no one in particular: “Commencing reality sterilization.”
The warehouse began to crumple, torn inward by an inexorable pressure differential that sucked mercilessly at the structure, pulling it slowly down, down into the earth of an island thousands of miles away. Lava eroded at the creatures trapped screaming in it’s bowels, washing up through dozens of portals that suddenly ceased as the reality pressure wave crushed them out of existence. And directly above, drawn by the inescapable gravity, the USAF Richard Nixon fell from the sky like a stone, plummeting into the ground where the portal to the volcanic furnace had only recently been sealed.
***************************************************************
Across the city, Aleiki collapsed to her knees, bullets tearing through her back, shredding internal organs and destroying blood vessels as they went, and Gisiebob went down with her. Caught in the open, the Proto-Americans had a clear shot, with nothing to stand in their way.
“This is Field Commander Shmoo, reporting to Richard Nixon, come in Richard Nixon. Hostiles are downed, repeat hostiles are downed.”
Only static met his call.
| 
Email this Novel
| 
Add to reading list
