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REVIEWS FOR IF GOD DOESN'T SHOW (A CTHULHU MYTHOS NOVEL)
"An excellent thriller that never fails to keep one guessing."
- Steven L. Shrewsbury
"Mix one part Lovecraft, with a liberal sprinkling of demons and a pinch of nuclear holocaust and it creates a true recipe of horrific proportions."- Scott T. Goudsward
"A well-crafted story with sharp edges and subtle beauty. Definitely recommended!"- Christopher Fulbright
SHADOW CREATURES ARE ATTACKING
Thaddeus Archer is an ex-police officer whose missing daughter holds the key to the mysterious force that threatens to lay waste to what’s left of our world. It’s a race against time for the broken and desperate Archer who must trust the only man who understands what’s happening, Gibson Blount, an agent of a secret government agency that doesn’t officially exist.
AN ISLAND HAS RISEN OUT OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN
As their world spirals into chaos both men must overcome their differences and personal demons in a world besieged by the re-animated dead, natural disasters, and elder god set on destruction.
CTHULHU IS ABOUT TO WAKE
- Excerpt from IF GOD DOESN'T SHOW -
The SUV accelerated up the drive. Inside, the president clutched the armrest. To his right, Melissa was on the SAT phone with D.C. briefing them on the situation. Across Washington phones began ringing, beepers chirped, and cell phones vibrated. Power breakfasts, closed-door power plays, and secret trysts were interrupted as news of the NOLA attack spread like wildfire.
The SUV stuttered to a stop.
“What's going on up there?” Melendez asked.
The window on the right of the passenger's side turned red, as if a water balloon, ripe with blood, had collided with it. It took a few seconds for the passengers to reconcile what they were seeing. Outside, a man flung himself against the glass once more. Fresh blood splattered the window from his shattered fists. Bits of bones and flesh were all that were left of his hands after the third blow.
“Jesus!” President Wendell said, as another attacker came from the left.
Secretary Carling flew forward and collided against the back window, bumping her head. It made a sound like a wet melon, and she slumped, unconscious.
The president was aghast. “Give me that phone,” he demanded, snatching the phone from his aide. “Who is this?” He listened for a few seconds, then said, “General, this is your President…”
Melendez leaned forward and hit the driver, Park Policeman Albert Jossart, in the shoulder. “Drive the fuckthrough them.” His tone left no room for argument.
Jossart floored the gas and cringed as the heavy SUV slammed into a woman who refused to move out of their path. There was barely a noticeable bump as the woman disappeared beneath the heavy vehicle. Something dark splashed across the windshield. At first, Jossart thought it was blood, but there was something different about the substance. It was more tar-like, almost syrupy. He shouted in surprise as a visage formed in the black liquid and pressed against the glass with an open-mouthed scream, then the substance drifted off the window like wind-blown ash.
The sharpshooters on the walls fired into the pursuing crowd behind the SUV. Jossart focused his attention forward on his goal: the gate opening slowly ahead. Decorative foliage lined both sides of the drive and, from these shadowy recesses, men and women, even some children, jumped out by the twos and threes. Jossart didn't slow.
Ahead, agents fired their automatic weapons at the ones that attempted to breach the open gate. Everything went so fast, no one had time to really think about what was happening and how surreal it all became. A chattering that lurked amongst the chaos grew.
Jossart expertly maneuvered through the narrow gate opening. Behind him, one of the protesters managed to snake an arm between the gaps in the fence. The gate ground to a halt as it crushed the woman's arm, but she didn't seem to notice. Jossart looked in his mirror, watching Agent Darren Gibbs toss aside his rifle and pull his service pistol. He extended his weapon and rested the barrel against the slobbering monstrosity's forehead. Jossart was a huge Romero fan and, for a brief moment, before Agent Gibbs pulled the trigger, the woman resembled a zombie. No, that was all fiction. What was out there was real--not a monster from some movie. Still…
The woman opened her mouth, and something dark and fluid erupted from it. This shadow slid between the bars and took a chunk out of Gibbs' forearm. Jossart's mouth dropped open. What the hell? He couldn't believe what he was seeing.
Agent Gibbs screamed in agony and stumbled back, firing his pistol wildly in the air. The woman wrenched her arm back, dislocating it at the elbow. She pulled her body back and forth, trying to dislodge her trapped arm. With a sickening rending, her arm came free at the elbow.
She stumbled away a few steps, glanced at the bloody stump, and then charged, clambering up the fence with unnatural speed. Agent Gibbs was almost to his feet when the woman fell on him with such savageness the other agents froze in hesitation and horror.
“Someone shoot that bitch!” Jossart heard a voice ring out from above.
The agents glanced up like deer caught in headlights. Jossart saw Archer come into view, pull his service pistol, and fire rapidly. The woman writhed and screamed as the hollow points ripped into her, but they didn't cease her attack. If anything, the bullets seemed to energize her actions. Somehow, Gibbs managed to roll free, and as she leapt to attack once more, he brought up his pistol.
The woman screamed in agony and rage as her teeth shattered on the barrel that disappeared deep into her mouth. Her head jerked as the gun's slide cycled each shot. The woman's face and head was an unrecognizable red and black mass when he was done. Gibbs scrambled back, disentangling himself from the corpse.
###
Archer hurried down the steps to the man's side. He was almost there when Gibbs glanced around erratically then shoved the gun into his own mouth. The man yelled in frustration as he realized there were no more rounds in the gun.
“No!” Archer sped up.
Gibbs flung the empty gun aside and reached down to his ankle, pulling his backup. With a gleeful smile of triumph, he stuffed the compact gun in his mouth, and the back of his head disappeared in a pink mist. Archer stuttered to a stop as his head passed through the splatter. He grimaced and closed his eyes as he felt blood, bits of brain, and skull spray his chest and face. It smelled like black licorice and spoiled milk.
Disorientated, Thaddeus barely sidestepped the woman as she reached out for him. His attention had been fixed on the shadow that had appeared to guide Gibbs's hand to his mouth. He fired four rapid shots into what was left of her face, but it seemed to have no effect.
Rearing up directly behind her, the shadow figure was nearly seven feet tall. What he was seeing was impossible, Thaddeus knew, but he was seeing it all the same. It was more than a shadow, he noticed, close up. It was like an absence of light--a black cut out surrounding the woman. He could see something moving in the darkness, like ghost images on a snowy TV set, but darker.
Tentacles of dark matter wove about the vaguely humanoid figure (like coral on a reef). Where the trailing wisps touched his wrist, they engulfed it in an icy coldness that took his breath away. The thing pulled back its hand as if to strike, and the woman followed suit. Without thinking, Archer fired into the black mass. It exploded into black ash and flew off with the breeze.
The roar of the onrushing crowd brought Archer back to the present. They slammed into the iron-gate as one force. The gate groaned in its moorings, and decades-old cement puffed into the air when the hinges broke free of their casements.
Archer reloaded his pistol as he backed away. He slid the magazine of unused ammo into his coat. He had a feeling he'd need it shortly. Any second the gates would give way, and they'd be overrun.
He had never seen a crowd so fierce in all his time in the service. He'd studied mob theory, and was familiar with how one acted and reacted, but this--this was something he'd never seen or read about. The ones at the front of the throng were being crushed against the gate, but they didn't seem to notice or care. The expression on their faces chilled his blood. They frothed at the mouth and sputtered obscenities at him.
The wind changed and the stench of vomit, blood, and excrement wafted over him. Archer's eyes welled at the smell, and it took everything he had not to vomit. With the smell, came the crowd's guttural moaning. The sound of so many people groaning the same, low note made his insides feel as if they were vibrating.
He squinted as something caught his eye. He looked up behind him at the sky, noted the position of the sun, and then glanced back at the mob. Their shadows weren't right.
“What the--”
Archer realized the sharpshooters had ceased firing. Confused, he glanced up at the walls. The agents were now facing inward, and their rifles were aimed right at him. He raised the pistol in his left hand in a non-threatening manner (at least, he hoped it was non-threatening), and he said, in as clear and strong a tone as he could manage, “Men, the bad guys are out there.”
One of the agents, Chris Prestin, turned to his fellow agent of seven years, raised his high-powered rifle, and casually blew the man's head into a red oblivion. Prestin's features contorted. His movements were stuttered, like those rooms in carnival funhouses with the rapidly flashing lights, where it made the person appear to be moving in spurts. Prestin's shadow seemed to move before he did. Like stop motion, Archer thought.
Something bad was happening to Agent Prestin--something utterly beyond Archer's experience--and it scared the crap out of him. Along the wall, the other agents turned on one another. Some shot each other, while others grappled then fell over the side, into the waiting mob below. As their limbs were ripped from their bodies, the torn joints snapped and popped, sounding like a dog worrying a bone.
Archer turned and ran for the house as chaos erupted behind him. Something terrible was going on, and he knew time was short, if it had not already run out. He had to get the president and the secretary off the ground to safety.
FYI: There's more Gibson Blount adventures.
Available from Grand Mal Press!
Available from Grand Mal Press!