Hola, everybody! The sun is out, the geese are hissing at people on the canal, and it’s time for a new bonus short story! This one’s a bit of a long ‘un, but if you’re a fan of the X-Files and H.P. Lovecraft, I think you’ll enjoy it!

Toodlepip until Monday!

M.

Find

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“Come on, up you get.”

I held out my hand and pulled Smiffy out of the rubble. I grabbed him by his helmet and made him look at me.

“Alright lad, I want you to focus on the tip of my finger. Okay?”

I watched him as he tracked my hand’s movements. Good. He wasn’t concussed.

“What the hell was that, captain?”

“Never been under mortar fire before, lad?” I picked my way through the rocks that were once a hovel. “The bastards got us good. That wall crumbled right on top of you, you’re lucky you’ve not broken anything. They stopped a few minutes ago, I saw a couple of yank jets fly over.”

Even if the mortars had stopped, I knew that somebody would be along to see what had happened to us. I’d rather make contact on my own terms. I scrambled up the hillside and onto the scrubland, dragging Smiffy with me. The landscape around us was barren and arid, with uneven ground that made travel frustrating. In the distance I could see pillars of thick black smoke rising up into the sky, great big greasy charcoal smudges that pointed towards the enemy.

I stood for a while, as Smiffy hauled himself to his feet beside me. The lad immediately crouched over.

“Jesus Christ… I feel like I’ve run a marathon…”

I pulled out my notebook. In its dog-eared pages, I’d jotted down some key bits of the mission briefing. We’d need it now; we were separated from the squad when the mortar attack started, and I couldn’t see them anywhere. We’d have to regroup at the target site.

“We’ll head that way, stick to the side of that hill range.”

We made our way slowly across the scrub, carefully placing each step so as not to trip over the knobbly ground. It didn’t take us long to reach the shade of the foothills, but the sun beat down hard enough upon us that even the few degrees of cool was as good as being doused in water.

The rest of our journey was uneventful, even as we passed by the bombed-out mortar nest. The Americans’ airstrike had been devastatingly effective; the whole area was charred and cratered, still and uncomfortably quiet. The blackened skeletons of two vehicles still burned, spewing out the black pillars that dominated the skyline. There was nobody left here, and nobody was coming to pick up the pieces.

It took another two hours’ trekking before we reached the lip of the cauldron. We stopped to catch our breath at the entrance to the passage inward. This was an ancient mountain, a long-extinct volcano that had weathered the fury of millions of years of sand, dust and wind. The passage itself was a tremendous fracture in the side of the slope, widened by the elements over time.

Somewhat recovered, we stepped into the dim twilight of the waterless canyon. There was a metallic tinge in the air, and a burnt powdery odour wafted upon the breeze. I tightened my grip on my rifle and undid the safety. Smiffy followed suit. The lad looked more terrified than wary. All that could be heard was the mourning wail of the wind blowing through the rocks, and in the hazy distance blocky shapes of buildings and trucks barely filtered through the cloak of dust.

We slowly approached the first vehicle. It was one of ours, a sand-painted landrover with oversized wheels. I wanted to feel reassured by its presence, but could not. One of the windows was cracked. A bullet had been embedded in the toughened glass. The passenger’s seat had a damp red stain soaked deeply into it. Red spatters coloured the dirt beside the open door. Up ahead we could make out two pickup trucks, scarred with hot desert sand and machinegun fire. They too were devoid of occupants.

I raised my weapon to my shoulder, and began shuffling towards the buildings beyond the trucks. They were little more than scrap metal nailed to wooden posts, and judging from the sunlight streaming through the scattered bullet holes they had been designed as shelter, not cover. A body had been slung over a windowsill, pistol in hand, blood dry and cracked underneath him. I saw Smiffy’s hand snaking out towards the dead man from the corner of my eye.

“Idiot!” I batted his arm away as soon as I spotted him moving. The poor lad got twisted to the side. I didn’t like being so rough, but better he be a little rattled than kill both of us.

“Never touch a body you’ve just found, son, unless you’re tired of having hands.”

Smiffy recoiled away from the corpse, and his eyes went wide as he envisioned innumerable horrible fates. I took out my torch and shone it into the interior of the shack. There were bodies in there too, more of the local forces we’d been battling along the way in. Two of them had been left where they lay, gore sprayed around them where they’d been shot defending themselves. Towards the back, a neat line of three people, slumped forward from a kneeling position. Their hands had been cable-tied. Only one of them wore a uniform. In the corner, a mass of silk and nylon rope had been hastily piled and poorly covered up with a filthy rug.

I waved Smiffy away from the shanty building, and we followed the passage deeper. We had begun to ascend now, and here and there we could see more evidence of fighting. A spent smoke grenade. Brass casings that rolled downhill when the wind picked them up. Blast marks and scattered shrapnel. Spots and splashes of blood, churned up with flurried footfalls.

As we followed the trail of battle, I felt the atmosphere grow heavier. It wasn’t just the gulf heat – This was oppressive. It weighed me down. It sapped the energy from my muscles and put lead at the bottom of my gut. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to go any further. I could feel a trembling beginning in my hand, my grip faltering. I tried to swallow, but my throat simply ground against itself, dry as it was. I could see Smiffy trying to do the same, tottering from side-to-side as he struggled to remain upright.

Finishing the climb brought no further relief. We walked out into the open floor of the cauldron, and I could feel my heartbeat through my teeth. Invisible claws sunk into my temples, pressing down and crushing my skull, while the throbbing artery deep inside my head hammered and hammered and hammered away. I could just about see the target through squinted eyes and the shimmering daylight.

The massive chunk of scorched rock sat at the centre of the cauldron, half-burrowed into the sandy ground. Dull black in colour, veins of violet streaked its ragged surface. They throbbed with a queasy glow, matching the rhythm of my pains. I gazed at the object, and couldn’t force my muscles to turn away from it. Rushing noise and piercing howls washed through my mind, as the creeping amethyst tendrils wound their way towards me. They wrapped around my body, squeezing and constricting me until my lungs burned with caustic desperation. I blinked. The vaporous tentacles were gone. The noise had ceased. I dropped to my knees, clutching at my throat and gulping down as much of the dusty air as my chest would hold. I stood up, clumsily, and shielded my eyes from the object with one hand.

Strewn around the base, radiating outwards in a circle, were at least a dozen bodies. On the outer rings, the blood-spattered sand fatigues of our boys. Facing them, the dark olive jumpsuits and gasmasks of Russian paratroopers. Both sides had expended most of their ammo in the firefight; some had even fallen back on their sidearms.

I stood over them for a moment. They were good men, and I would drink to their memory later, but I couldn’t grieve for them now. I simply nodded at their bodies; they had given their all, and had gone out with a good fight. That’s all I could’ve asked of them.

I heard Smiffy let out a hoarse yelp. He was pointing towards the rock. There was somebody standing in front of it. It was one of the Russians. His head was sunk down to his chest, and his armour was riddled with caught bullets. I could see rips and bloodstains in his uniform where he’d been winged. He wasn’t holding a weapon. Instead, he merely stood, swaying unsteadily on the spot, hands by his side. I levelled my rifle at him, gritting my teeth as the burning aura of the rock crashed into my eyes once more.

“Oi! Russky! Over here!” I shouted.

The man stopped moving, but didn’t otherwise respond. He continued to stare at the ground in front of him.

“Step away from the rock, Russky. Poshli! Poshli!”

Smiffy took a couple of steps towards the soldier. I had to grab him. How many of the other Russians were still alive, waiting for the chance to pounce on us? The burning in my head and in my chest was returning, rapidly, and I was quickly losing patience with the man in front of me. I aimed a couple of metres in front of him and pulled the trigger once.

The crack of the shot bounced around the cauldron, turning the quick, sharp bang into a roaring rumble. This seemed to alert the Russian, as he snapped his head up to look at the two of us. I quickly re-sighted on him.

“Got your attention now, eh? C’mon, out the way! Out the way, Russky!”

Before the Russian howled, I had never imagined that such a sound could exist. Even in all my tours, I’ve never had the need to describe the raw mix of horror and sheer terror that manifested in that noise. I don’t know much Russian, but I’ve served long enough know what agony sounds like in any language. I opened fire as he began sprinting towards us. He tore across the ground, boots thudding on and over the corpses of his fallen comrades. A distorted snorting bellow forced its way through his mask, a fear-filled scream of undiluted rage. It slid sharply from shrill wailing to guttural weeping and back in the same, throaty screech. I could hear it as clearly as if it were piercing right to the core of my body, even over the thunder of my rifle.

I don’t know if any of my bullets hit; my arms were quivering from exhaustion and adrenaline. I heard Smiffy’s machine gun go for a few seconds, but that didn’t stop the charging man. I had to stop shooting when he reached the boy. The Russian slammed himself into Smiffy, and they fell to the ground with a tremendous crash.

I’ve seen fanatics charging bare-chested into combat, frothing at the mouth and fuelled by pure zeal. I had never seen raw, naked aggression like this. The Russian swung wildly, beating upon Smiffy’s face, slamming his gloved fists into the poor boy again and again and again. An instant before I could pull him off the lad, I heard a wet crack and a sudden muffled gurgling. I knew there would be no point. I put the barrel of my rifle next to the bastard’s head.

Two shots. He limply tumbled onto the ground.

Smiffy’s chest rose and fell rapidly. I think he was trying to say something, but only damp bubbles came out. I gritted my teeth again, but not for my own pain. He reached up to me, and I grasped his hand one last time.

“I’m so sorry, lad. I’ll tell your missus your last words were for her.”

A strangled cry crawled its way out of his throat. I pulled out my pistol, looked him in the eye, and ended his struggle.

I stood up to face the rock. I had braced myself for another wave of torture, to feel the clawing of the aura inside my head again. But its pulsing glow had faded. It now dimly stuttered softly, almost completely dark. I reloaded my weapon and staggered towards the object.

As I approached, I could see what the glowing veins were. They were smooth splits in the rough shell, wide enough to wedge a hand in. I knew it would be stupid under ordinary circumstances, but I’d had enough of this desert, the death, and this bloody chunk of rock and metal. I yanked on the groove a few times, and it eventually gave way as I leaned my whole weight into it. My boots skidded across the sandy ground as the panel hissed open.

I scrambled to pull myself back up, and found myself looking into the interior of the object. Nestled among scores of flashing screens and panels, a dwarfish creature slowly lolled its head over to look at me with bulging black eyes.  Its sallow skin was wrinkled, and it flapped its tiny mouth up and down, rasping and gasping for breath. I could feel its energy trying to seep into my mind, invisible slender fingers trying to probe and puppet my brain. Unlike before, the feeling was weak, feeble, spent. With tense and shaking fingers, I delved into my pocket and pulled out my notebook.

I made the requisite sounds, reading them phonetically as I had written them down at the briefing. The creature lifted its head weakly, and croaked something back at me. To this day, I can’t be certain whether it matched the response I had noted down, or not. I would tell my superiors that it had.

I followed my orders. For the last time that day, I levelled my weapon at another living being. It didn’t flinch. It barely even moved. It just sat, slumped, and glared at me with exhausted, angry eyes.

Black blood splashed over the screens, and the thrumming glow of the object died with its owner. I sat down in the sand for a while, and called in the extraction.