Anthony DeCosmo - Fusion

The rumbling mass of charcoal-colored clouds sprung to life with a sudden blast of energy. Lightning sizzled. Thunder boomed.

“You can see it all from here, Mr. Armand,” Jorgie tried to sound cheerful; a stark contrast to everything around him. “It’s right there.”

Jorgie stopped speaking as they reached the cliff and gazed across the earth toward the monstrous wall of mountain. The plain there-the one stretching from the observation point to the temple-was no longer empty.

All around the temple lay thousands of blobs of green goo of various sizes and shapes. Trevor could not be sure, but he thought he saw puffs of smoke-maybe steam-rising from the things. Perhaps cooling or sizzling after their journey through time and space.

“My god…” Armand’s voice trailed off.

One by one-repeated a thousand times-the green bubbles ripped and popped and parted. The barbed legs and jagged fangs and sharp claws of thousands of monsters of more shapes and sizes than any nightmare could conjure poked and pushed free from the capsules.

Trevor recalled how humans taken in the vessels had been found unconscious, but Voggoth’s demons traveled with no such limitations. No doubt the discrepancy lay in the difference between life and lifeless. Regardless, Voggoth had brought an army to face them. An army, Trevor felt certain, that a moment ago infested the cities and towns of middle America in years past.

Those creatures could have done no good against Dreadnoughts and armored divisions, K9 corps and jet fighters. But there in the shadow of the Urals they could serve Voggoth as a last-gasp stopgap against the surprise strike of the European force.

“My god, what do we do?” Alexander’s shock and surprise cut through his more rational tendencies.

Armand coolly answered the obvious, “We bring the army up. We fight.”

“But if Voggoth could do this once, he may very well keep doing it.”

Trevor told Alexander, “Let’s hope so.”

Even Armand found that answer surprising.

Trevor said, “After we cut through these things, Voggoth will send more. And then more. And then more. He will keep sending them until he can stop us from doing what we came here to do. I think that each time he brings these things through space and time it disrupts the natural order of things, like splashes in a quiet pond. I think the other beings who are involved in all this know that he should not be making those splashes, but they’ve either not noticed or ignored him so far. Let him keep sending them until those splashes can’t be ignored. If he does it enough, maybe someone will listen to me.”

Alexander and Armand shared a look and then Alexander asked, “ Who will listen to you, Trevor?”

He did not answer Alexander’s question. Instead he knelt and rested his hands on his son’s shoulders. With his eyes settling smoothly on Jorgie, Trevor said to the others, “We have to get in that temple. Armand, I’m counting on you to get us past all that. Can you do that?”

Armand snorted a chuckle.

“Can I do that? Trevor, it is what I was born to do.”

The mortar shell exploded in the midst of a group of charging, four-legged horse-sized creatures covered in metal-like armor with horns and jagged barbs everywhere. The concussion from the blast knocked three of the things over but they each regained their feet fast. A fourth was not so lucky. Shrapnel hit it square in its relatively unprotected face; a face covered in pin-sized lights that might be eyes arranged above a screaming, elongated jaw from which bellowed one last ghastly death-scream as the blast tore away its blood-red flesh.

Not far from them, a swarm of things best described as mutated alligators-dozens of them-charged at the northern flank of the European lines. Their spines glowed white from some unearthly energy bottled inside; their snouts snapped open and shut, flashing hooked teeth. The rest of their bodies were covered in constant slither as thousands of tiny parasites-worms of a hellish sort-lived on the hides of the devilish things.

A tripod mounted machine gun behind a wall of toppled boulders met the monsters hitting those in the lead snuffing whatever spark of motivation masqueraded as life within the damned animals. Still, more than half of the alligator-beasts crashed into the machine gun nest. One German soldier was caught between jaws from behind as he abandoned his post a second too late. Another managed to break free thanks to covering fire provided from Turkish assault rifles, but one of the warped alligators spat a stream of fire from its belly and incinerated the man.

Similar scenes repeated across the battle field as the lead elements of the European army arrived soldier by soldier, truck by truck and the legion of monsters guarding the temple moved to meet them.

To the south at the foot of the ridge overlooking the black plains, a line of Spanish infantrymen with light arms and grenades waded into a sea of half-metal devil dogs the size of small cars.

To the north a brave charge of Italian horse soldiers violently collided with rhinoceros-like beasts sporting twin horns from which arced electrical bolts capable of microwaving a man.

Across the center raged a chaotic battle. Polish fighters on foot and in light trucks advanced with Danish regulars on their flanks. They hit the enemy with assault rifles and mounted machine guns. That enemy hit back with burning balls of screaming fire flying like comets and dropping napalm on the human ranks; with axe-wielding ten-foot-tall crimson-colored octopuses slashing the attackers in an insane fury; with bipedal yellow-eyed fur-covered mammals resembling upright tigers capable of leaping fifty feet in one bound.

On the ridge to the west, mankind’s reinforcements kept coming as the stretched army arrived at its destination piece by piece. Military vehicles with machine gun and anti-tank mounts re-fueled and deployed toward the action; towed artillery assembled and prepared to fire; fighters ranging from young and old, amateur to professional grabbed rifles and pistols and raced toward the action.

To the east beneath the wall of rock cut out of the Urals, bolts of lightning reached from the charred heavens to the Temple of Voggoth. Every few minutes those flashes illuminated yet another crop of green sarcophagi appearing on the plains around the blasphemous building. Those bulbs burst open and more claws, mandibles, and walking horrors joined Voggoth’s defenses.

The battle raged in the sky. The Euro Tiger helicopter strafed the demonic mobs with cannon fire. Giant flying insects swooped into the chaos and plucked hapless victims from the carnage like gulls snatching fish from the sea.

This was no pitched battle. It was the nature of war itself: bloody, anarchic, and merciless. The wonder weapons of man’s futuristic arsenal played no role. Bullets fired at close range-explosives tearing apart apparitions-sharp and blunt weapons, fists and kicks battled talons and jaws, breath of fire, spitting acid, and swinging clubs.

A V-shaped formation of motorcycles cut through the madness. Heavy cavalry led the charge with lances knocking aside and skewering any beast that dared block the path. Guns blasted; swords swung. Armand’s riders led the way like a plow clearing a snow-covered road.

In the middle of the formation, Rick Hauser drove the heavily armored van Trevor and JB had called home during three weeks of travel from France to Eurasia.

One of the Royal Marines sat in the passenger seat alongside Hauser. Trevor and JB huddled behind gripping the van’s cargo nets as the vehicle bounced and wobbled over rough terrain and dead bodies. Through the windshield Trevor could see Armand on his Ducati zipping side to side and adding his FAMAS fire wherever the battle needed it.