The Book of Cthulhu 2 Page 17

  As Sergeant released the shotgun, Hennessey, with a nod from Paskow, threw himself against the door. At age twenty, Hennessey was a horse of a man: six-foot-two and two hundred and twenty pounds of combat-honed muscle. Under that kind of force, the door swung open like a spring-loaded trap and struck Sergeant in the chin. He stumbled backwards and landed hard on his rump. Hennessey put a boot in his chest and shoved him back down on the floor. “Stay down! Don’t get up!”

  True to what his hand had suggested, Sergeant presented another fine example of Innsmouth’s poor breeding habits. He was thin, with stooped shoulders. Like his neighbors, he had the same flaky, peeling skin, almost like he’d been sunburnt. His eyes, mouth, and lips were disproportionately large, and his sloping forehead and chin seemed to simply fall into his strangely creased neck. “Where’s your wife?”

  The question filled Sergeant’s bulging blue eyes with terror. “Ya can’t take her. She’s too sick ah tell ya.”

  “We’ll be the judge of that,” Paskow said as he coolly surveyed the interior of the house. The furnishings seemed oddly antiquated, as if Sergeant lived in a house full of his grandfather’s furnishings. The room was lit by a single oil lamp. “Boyle, check the rooms on this floor. Lyman, check upstairs.” Boyle quickly set off, but Lyman hesitated a moment. Paskow’s bark of “Get a move on!” sent him scurrying up the stairs.

  “Don’t go up thar!” Sergeant croaked from the floor. As he began to pull himself off the floor, Hennessey put him back down again with the boot.

  “Stay there!”

  “Ya don’t understand!” Sergeant looked absolutely panicked now. “Ma wife, she needs me!”

  “If he tries to get up again, shoot him,” Paskow said with finality. On that note Hennessey pulled back the action lever on the Thompson’s bolt and aimed the muzzle right at Sergeant’s face. His complexion, already quite gray, grew considerably less healthy.

  From upstairs Lyman called down, “I think I found it, Corporal. There’s a padlocked door.”

  Paskow looked down at Sergeant. “Where’s the key?” Sergeant just looked away at the floor. “Fine. We’ll break it open. Boyle! Get back here and watch the prisoner.” As Boyle came back in through the dining room from the kitchen Paskow turned and trudged up the stairs.

  “Just sit still,” Hennessey warned. “We’ll have your wife down in a jiffy.” Despite the reassurance, Sergeant looked like a coiled spring. Hennessey could hear the crunching thuds of a shotgun butt smashing at the padlock upstairs. Once. Twice. The third crack was followed by a sharp crash, and then a scream.

  No, not a scream. More like a roar.

  What followed was a scream, like nothing Hennessey had heard since the time his uncle gelded one of the horses on his Oklahoma ranch: high-pitched and piercing, almost like a whistle. Both Hennessey and Boyle reflexively looked up to the source of the sound. That was when Sergeant made his move. He swung his leg with speed and strength so shocking that Hennessey had no time to comprehend before he landed flat on his back. Sergeant gained his feet in a flash, and just as fast jumped across the room to grab Boyle’s trench gun and try to wrench it away. Boyle was a strong man, strong as an ox, and he swung Sergeant around and sent the two of them crashing into the dining room table.

  Hennessey rolled to his feet just in time to jump clear of two figures tumbling down the stairs together. One was a Marine; the other, something out of a sideshow. Sparse strands of hair were plastered to a head the size and shape of a pumpkin. A sheen of moisture extended from its scalp down its back. The thing had rubbery, bloated skin, mottled gray in color, gone green in patches, and peeling like someone was halfway through skinning it when it tumbled down the stairs. Its feet were huge with widely splayed toes that showed more of the curious webbing between them. The same was true of the hands, except these were tipped by hideously curved nails over two inches long. The Marine it had locked itself around screamed hysterically and beat at its back and sides with his fists. Hennessey couldn’t open up with the Thompson for fear of shooting the man to pieces. Instead, he swung the machine gun’s buttstock down onto the thing’s skull. The noise was like Joe Jackson hitting a home run, but it didn’t let go. He brought the weapon down again and again. Still nothing. Then the Marine’s screaming cut off with a wet tearing sound.

  “Get th’hell outta the way.” Paskow’s voice was strangely calm. He stood at the top of the landing, taking careful aim with his trench gun, blood running from a pair of long scratch marks from just under his left eye down to his jaw line. Hennessey jumped back and Paskow blew off the back of the thing’s upturned rump. The thing sat bolt upright, its huge, lidless eyes and its mouth locked open in an almost comical look of surprise. Rows of pointed teeth hung clotted with bits of Lyman’s throat. Hennessey could plainly see the blood-red gills on the sides of its greasy neck open and close spasmodically. Then most of the head above the eyes exploded in a fine mist as Paskow put it down.

  Over in the corner of the dining room, Boyle still grappled with Sergeant for the trench gun. Paskow calmly walked down the stairs, stepped over the two corpses, and bellowed, “Boyle! Hit the deck!” Boyle got the message and let go of the shotgun, dropping to the floor. Sergeant looked up just in time to see the muzzle flash before the contents of his chest splashed the dining room’s brown, peeling wallpaper.

  Hennessey looked away and became transfixed by the thing sprawled atop Lyman. Now that he could see the front of it, he noticed details of even more terrible proportion. It wasn’t that it was inhuman. No, the problem was that it was so very human. Pendulous breasts would seem to signify a mammal, but the other features suggested a mix of fish and frog, as did the rotting, nearly choking stench.

  Suddenly Hennessey remembered to see if Lyman were still alive. Most of the kid’s throat had been torn out. His esophagus was laid wide open and the gleaming bones of his vertebrae were clearly visible. No blood pumped from the severed veins.

  Someone appeared at the door.

  “What the hell’s—” Sergeant Miles’ demand was cut short when he saw the bloated woman-thing. “Jesus! I…I’d better go get the Lieutenant.”

  Pulling up a chair at the overturned dinner table, Paskow plopped himself down. “Yeah. I’m sure Cobb’ll know just what to do,” he muttered sardonically.

  “Christ Almighty,” Boyle whispered after retrieving his shotgun. “What is that thing?”

  “That guy on the other street knew,” Hennessey muttered. “He said to watch out for Mrs. Sergeant. He said she was beginning to change.”

  “Change into what?” Boyle sounded shaky.

  “Nothing good,” Paskow added as he lit a cigarette with his lighter.

  Just then, Lieutenant Cobb strode in and boggled at the sight of the thing that had torn the throat out of one of his Marines. It took him a second to compose himself enough to ask Paskow what had happened.

  Without bothering to put out his smoke, Paskow stood and faced Lieutenant Cobb. “This fella on the floor barred our entry, so we had t’force our way in. Then this thing over here, which the first fella had padlocked in a room upstairs, busted out. It opened up my face and tore out Private Lyman’s throat with its teeth. I had to kill it and the other fella since he was trying to take Private Boyle’s weapon away from him.”

  “I think it’s his wife,” Hennessey added weakly.

  “What?” snapped Lieutenant Cobb.

  Feeling all the eyes in the room on him, Hennessey felt himself shrink. “One of the other folks on the last street said something about Mrs. Sergeant changing and that we ought to watch out for her.”

  “And you think this…this aberration is his wife?” Lieutenant Cobb shot back.

  “He did say his wife was in the house, sir,” Paskow said, tapping his ash. “And there’s nobody else here but him and her…or it, if you prefer.”

  “She must have slipped out of the house while you were fighting with this…thing.”

  “I don’t think this is the only one
of these things we’re going to find, sir,” Paskow continued painfully. “I think we’re going to find one of these in every attic.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Cobb said, without much conviction. The Lieutenant’s rejoinder was cut off by the sound of gunfire out in the street. Facing something as mundane as bullets was infinitely preferable to puzzling over the dead heap on the floor. “C’mon, men! Let’s go!” Lieutenant Cobb turned and bolted out the door. The other Marines followed him into the yard and were greeted by the sight of three Marines spraying the front of a brick house with their Thompsons. Sergeant Fields was stumbling around holding a glove to a bullet-hole in his upper left arm. The gunfire quickly subsided and the three Marines charged up the front steps and kicked in what was left of the bullet-ridden door.

  “Got ’er,” one called down after a quick look inside.

  “Sergeant! What’s the situation?”

  “The woman shot me, sir!” the Sergeant roared. “She pulled out an honest t’god revolver and started shootin’!”

  “Did you provoke her?”

  Sergeant Fields looked sincerely insulted. “No sir. We told her we were comin’ in and she started shootin’ is all.”

  Just then they heard a hoarse caterwaul from the basement window to the left of the front steps. As the Marines peered into the darkness, they were startled by the sound of breaking glass. A long, rubbery-looking arm groped through the window’s clinging shards and rattled the bars beyond. “Mah-ree!” it croaked. “Mah-ree! Whar’s mah waaf? Whaat ave yoo dun t’ mah waaf?”

  Again, those nearest the window hit a choking, fishy odor. Lieutenant Cobb’s face wrinkled in an expression of confusion and disgust. He turned to Sergeant Miles and gagged out the order, “Get the Captain.”

  Captain Kardashian didn’t exactly look like the guy on the recruiting poster. He was short but straight-backed, with olive skin and a bad complexion. His black eyes and mustache could have been found on a Hollywood villain. Rumor was, he’d come up from the ranks with a battlefield commission during the Great War. He was accompanied by one of the T-men bundled in a dark topcoat and fedora.

  As soon as he approached, Cobb said, “There’s one in that basement, sir. My men killed another one across the street in that house there.”

  “Let’s have a look at this one here, Lieutenant.”

  The creature bellowed and cried for its wife, Mary, and shook the bars with its webbed hands. After a few moments of staring noncommittally, Kardashian announced, “I’ll see the dead one now.”

  Hennessey and some other Marines had begun to follow the entourage across the street when Sergeant Miles turned and roared, “What th’ hell d’ya think yer doin’! Don’t stand around like a bunch’a ducks in a shootin’ gallery! Spread out and form a perimeter to secure this block!” The Marines scrambled into position instantly.

  Although they were supposed to be watching the streets and windows, many of the Marines were asking each other what was going on and trying to get Boyle, Hennessey, or Paskow to tell them what they’d seen in the Sergeant house and what had happened to Lyman. Paskow kept his views to himself, but Boyle and Hennessey ended up repeating the story about a dozen times.

  Then, from the east, towards the docks, the sounds of a full-scale battle shattered the calm. The avenue echoed with the clattering of Thompsons and the booming of shotguns. All the Marines looked east like dogs catching a scent. It wasn’t like the earlier gunfire. Once or twice before they’d heard the odd angry shot, but this was something else. Those who’d seen the fields of Flanders in the Great War had heard the sound before: a “Big Push,” hundreds of men charging across No Man’s Land into the blazing muzzles of enemy machine guns and barbed wire. But it wasn’t quite the same. Instead of the roaring hurrah of the advancing troops, there was another sound. Something like a swamp filled with frogs, only deeper and fuller. Then they saw the flare pop high to the east. Under its parachute, the white magnesium glare threw stark, crazily jumping shadows down alleys and through hollow windows. Hennessey stood transfixed, watching it drift behind the building and into the midst of the still-raging battle.

  “Marines! Listen up!” It was Captain Kardashian standing atop the hood of the dilapidated motor coach in front of the Sergeant house. “These are your new orders concerning evacuation. Any local who looks abnormal is to be treated as a hostile. Take no chances. If they resist for even a second, shoot ’em. If you come across any locked or padlocked doors, don’t open ’em. We’ll just keep the things in there bottled up until we’re ready for ’em. Mark every house where you find one of those things with an ‘X.’ Carve it in the front door and move on to the next house. Do you understand?”

  The cry of “yessir” went up all down the line. Just then a young Marine came charging up Martin Street and onto Phillips at a dead run.

  “Captain! Captain Kardashian!”

  “What is it, soldier?”

  “Captain Frost sent me, sir,” he gasped. “First Company is under attack on the docks. We need reinforcements immediately!” A spatter of blood marked his white winter camouflage.

  Kardashian spun around on Lieutenant Cobb. “That’ll be you, Bill. Get your platoon down there right now! Double-time!”

  “Yessir! Third Platoon to me!” Cobb shouted. Hennessey and the rest of the men quickly converged and set off at a jog down Martin Street to the sea. As they ran, the pounding of thirty pairs of boots thumped in counterpoint to the rattling bullets in the Thompsons’ drum-magazines. Even above that din, Hennessey could hear the battle raging in front of them. Another parachute flare arched skyward. Even eight hundred yards away, down the sloping hill to the harbor, the Marines could see flashes of gunfire.

  As they crossed Lafayette Street, the brooding shape of the Marsh Mansion loomed above them to their left. The grounds stretched all the way along Martin between Lafayette and Washington, while the mansion itself, with its wide-terraced parterres, towered three stories. Its top was crowned by an iron-railed widow’s walk. Big black Packard sedans and military trucks filled the driveway and yard. Flanking the front gate and door, pairs of dark-coated T-men in fedoras cradled their Thompsons. Marines were lifting some kind of stone statue into the back of one of the trucks while a nervous T-man kept saying, “Easy! Go easy with that!” More Marines prodded a handcuffed figure down the front walk with their bayonets. Whatever it was, it wore a bloodied nightshirt and stumbled along with a curious hopping limp. Four Marines had been laid out on the front lawn, side by side, their helmets placed over their faces, their white camouflage torn and crusted with blood.

  The docks were five more blocks ahead, nearly four football fields away, down a corridor of crumbling warehouses and office buildings, obviously long-abandoned. Hennessey’s lungs burned as he ran. He could now hear screams, shouted orders, and cries of agony. And behind that din, the chorus of croaking and braying rumbled. Suddenly out of the blackness a baby-faced Marine emerged running straight for them. His face was as white as his camouflage. He didn’t slow down for a second, just swerved to the right and flew right past Hennessey’s platoon, tears of mindless panic streaming down his face.

  On Water Street, right in front of the wharf, Thompsons and Browning machine-guns fired such long bursts they should have melted the barrels into slag. Marines ran this way and that. It appeared at first as if every Marine in First Company was trying to spend every last round as quickly as possible by firing into the blackness under the docks. A wild-eyed corporal ran past Lieutenant Cobb, a can of belted machine-gun ammo in each hand, screaming, “They’re under the docks! Get ’em! Get ’em!”

  The air burned with cordite. Every breath scalded the lungs. But even above the scent of war, a more ponderous stench asserted itself, the old rotting smell of dead fish, now grown monumental. It displaced the air and seemed to steal the last usable oxygen. Hennessey almost believed that his stomach would surrender its contents to the stink, when he noticed the croaking, bellowing chorus rising from the w
harves of Innsmouth blending with the splashing of hundreds of flailing limbs. The men of Third Company, Third Platoon stumbled forward to the edge of the sea wall, peering down among the jumble of ships’ masts and pilings. Hennessey followed, straining into the dark tangle. And at that moment, everyone wished they were back in the jungle with Sandino.

  Below the docks, outlined by the strobing muzzle flashes of nearly a hundred weapons, clinging to wharf pilings, hanging from the masts and rigging, and crouched on the listing decks of Innsmouth’s worm-eaten fishing fleet, squirmed an army out of drowned nightmares. Two arms, two legs, and a bloated, lolling head—each stood like a man with a cork-screwed spine. But the similarity to terrestrial life ended at that, for these were creatures of the deep. The white gleam of the flare reflected in hundreds of pairs of fat, oily eyes mounted on the sides of scaly heads, the eyes of creatures crafted by evolution to strain every last particle of light from their environment. Wet, lazy gills opened and closed on the sides of their stout necks. Their taloned, webbed hands and feet, like baseball gloves, were splayed wide. Their bottom jaws dropped open like the cavernous mouths of sea bass and again those barking croaks issued forth. “Iä! Iä!” came the war cry from the deep. “Iä!”

  Nobody had to give the order to open fire. It erupted in a spasmodic fusillade that sent dozens more of the barking horde tumbling into the black waters. Hennessey brought his Thompson to his shoulder and began firing bursts into the thickest knot of them, chopping through rubbery hide, sending gouts of scarlet and other colors over the rotten timbers. They fell, only to be immediately replaced by a dozen more. The Marines, Hennessey included, were all screaming now, nearly drowning out the croaking of the fish-men. But they could not slow the charge. Pump-action shotguns worked with blinding speed, Thompsons raked over the braying throng, but it was not enough. Within seconds the things gained the sea wall and began to climb.