A World Darkly (Wrath of the Old Gods Book 3) Read online

  A World Darkly

  Wrath of the Old Gods Book III

  By John Triptych

  Copyright© 2016 by John Triptych

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN (soft cover) 978-621-95332-5-6

  J Triptych Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, and/or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover by Deranged Doctor Design (http://www.derangeddoctordesign.com/)

  Interior formatting by Polgarus Studios

  For Beverly (AKA Polgara). A gracious lady, good friend, and ever loyal fan.

  Table of Contents

  Author’s note:

  1. Dastardly Doings

  2. Reflections in the Flames

  3. The Ritual of Skins

  4. Rivers of Voodoo

  5. Minutes of the Meeting

  6. Below the Mud

  7. Hearts of Darkness

  8. Thunder Run

  9. Journey to Mictlan

  10. The Stranger Cometh

  11. Lord of the Lies

  12. Repel Boarders

  13. The Dream of the Smoking Mirror

  14. Escape from Purgatory

  15. The Guilty Ones

  16. The Secret Prisoner

  17. A Child to the Mother

  18. A Model Family

  19. A Parliament of Owls

  20. The Omega Fellowship

  21. The Rain God

  22. The Forests of Eden

  23. The Serpent of Vision

  24. The Betrayer

  25. The Exorcists

  26. Intrusion of the Profane

  27. Ouroboros

  Also by J Triptych Publishing

  Author’s note:

  Dear reader, I would like to thank you for purchasing this book. As a self-published author, I incur all the costs of producing this novel so your feedback means a lot to me. If you wouldn’t mind, could you please take a few minutes and post a review of this online and let others know what you think of it?

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  Down to a dark abyss my heart has sounded,

  A mournful world, by grey horizons bounded,

  Where blasphemy and horror swim by night.

  For half the year a heatless sun gives light,

  The other half the night obscures the earth.

  The arctic regions never knew such dearth.

  No woods, nor streams, nor creatures meet the sight.

  -Charles Baudelaire, De profundis clamavi

  1. Dastardly Doings

  Texas Front Line

  They officially called it the Dallas Line, though its more popular nickname was the Doomsday Defense. It was really nothing more than a series of observation posts strung out along the south of the city. The soldiers own nickname for it was the “string of no resistance”. The military had now been so depleted, there was no way they could fully man the country’s receding borders to the south. Although there had been a Federal order to evacuate the whole state, there were still significant numbers of native Texans who stayed behind. The US government had been making dire warnings that an invasion from the south was now imminent, but many people refused to become refugees. They just didn’t want to pack up, they couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the state that they had grown up and lived in for decades. If this would be their final stand, then so be it. The soul of the Alamo lived on in them.

  Private First Class Tyrone Gatlin climbed up on the hood of the Humvee as he carried their dinner using both arms. Since the vehicle was parked facing the truck stop, all he had to do was place the container of food on the overhanging roof of the building. As he did just that, another soldier standing on top of the roof looked down on him and aimed his M-4 carbine at Tyrone.

  “Halt, who goes there?” the freckle faced soldier said.

  Tyrone snorted as he used his arms to pull himself up on the overhang. “It’s me for chrissakes.”

  “Yeah? What’s the codeword then?”

  Tyrone shook his head as he picked up the paper bag again. “Jesus.”

  “Wrong. It ain’t Jesus.”

  Tyrone sighed. “Okay, it’s quarterback. Are you happy now? What’s the countersign?”

  “Sneak. Come on up then.”

  Tyrone took two steps until he faced the wooden façade of the upper roof. Then he placed the bag on top of the wall and pulled himself up once more. After climbing up a second time, he was now on the topmost roof of the truck stop as he walked towards his gear. The second soldier smiled and took off his ballistic helmet as he sat down on a folding chair. The night air was cool and the skies were clear as they could see the twinkling stars above.

  “I can’t believe you have to challenge me every time I make a dinner run for the both of us,” Tyrone said as he placed the paper bag on the steel folding table. “Can’t you see that it’s just me?”

  “Just followin’ orders,” Specialist Fred Novak said as he began rummaging through the bag and took out a styrofoam box. “What’ve you got this time?”

  “Ribs and trimmings. One of the volunteers brought along a full barbeque kit, so it looks like the whole unit’s gonna be eating good tonight.”

  They were both stationed in a small town called Carl’s Corner, less than forty miles from the southern outskirts of Dallas. The place was really nothing more than a truckstop in between two highways. A famous country singer once had a museum in the compound, but hard times forced it to close. Now they were sitting on top of a building that had been abandoned ever since the crisis began. The area surrounding them was mostly flat grassland and highways, with occasional copses of trees out across the horizon.

  Tyrone chewed on the last of his portion of ribs as he stared at the white water tank out in the distance. He had joined the Army just a scant eleven months before the Glooming happened. Before that, he'd worked at his parent’s grocery store in Georgia. Even though his mother had encouraged him to go to college, Tyrone hated school and so he'd joined the military instead. It was just his luck that the world suddenly turned upside down and now he had the feeling that he was going to die soon. Many of the people he trained with were now missing since most of his training batch was assigned to US Army South, just before they crossed into the Mexican border and were never heard from again. That had been almost a year ago. Now they were hearing rumblings that whatever was down south of them was preparing an invasion. If an entire Army Corps was unable to stop whatever it was out there, what chance would an ad hoc unit of reservists and newly-trained recruits have?

  “You seem to be zoning out again, Ty,” Fred said as he drank from a plastic water bottle. He was a native of Dallas and had been with the Army for two years now. His father and grandfather before him had all served in the military, and Fred was prepared from birth to follow in their footsteps. Fred had already signed up for Selective Service even before his eighteenth birthday, just to sh
ow everyone how patriotic he was. While Tyrone had uneasy thoughts about the coming war, Fred was more than ready to lay down his life for his state and his country.

  Tyrone got up and put his trash in the black plastic bag on the side of the building. “Just thinking about home is all.”

  “Where you from again?”

  “Georgia, I thought I told you.”

  “I guess I forgot,” Fred said as he too got up and walked over to the radio. The rest of their squad was at Hillsboro, less than four miles away to the south. The two of them had orders to report any possible flanking movements by the enemy. Their mission was not to engage but only to observe and report. A small group of civilian volunteers was over at Lovelace, a compound of houses just a couple of miles to the west. The military was hard-pressed, so any civilian who had a two-way radio and was willing to volunteer, was immediately sworn in as paramilitary support. Two brothers, who were former truckers, were now holed up in one of the houses at Lovelace with a CB radio tuned in to a military frequency.

  Tyrone took one of the folding chairs near the table and placed it near the radio. “I haven’t heard anything at all this evening. You sure that thing’s working?”

  Fred sat on the ground as he adjusted the radio settings. “Everything seems okay to me. Maybe there’s just nothing to report.”

  Tyrone shrugged as he picked up his own M-4 rifle and checked it. “I’m just surprised Lieutenant Sabatini isn’t doing one of his hourly radio checks.”

  “You’re right,” Fred said as he put on the headset and began transmitting. “Opie Four to Hillsboro, come in, over.”

  For the next few minutes, Fred continued to try and contact his commander in Hillsboro but all he got was static. He switched frequencies to contact the civilian volunteers at Lovelace and got a satisfactory response. Fred then went back to the HQ frequency and continued his attempts to contact Hillsboro once more.

  Tyrone took out a sandstone medallion from one of his pockets and began to rub it. The symbol in the center of the pendant was that of an intertwined serpent eating its own tail. “Any kind of response?”

  “Nothing, but at least we still got Lovelace, and they’re reporting everything is a-okay,” Fred said as he took off the headset and noticed what Tyrone was doing. “What is that you got there?”

  “Ouroboros. It’s a lucky charm.”

  “I can see that. Are you superstitious or something?”

  “Not really,” Tyrone said as he shook his head sheepishly. “Well, maybe just a little. This is a religious symbol to me, like a cross.”

  Fred smirked. “Oh yeah, what’s your religion?”

  “I was born into African Methodist Episcopal because my family was. But you know, times have changed. I started worshipping the Master of Breath a few months ago.”

  Fred laughed. “So that’s what’s the medallion for? You worshipping one of these old Indian gods now?”

  “Muscogee and Seminole,” Tyrone said. “I met a guy who said he saw the god Esaugetuh Emissee manifest himself to him. A lot of people in my home state are starting to worship him. They all say he’s real, compared to Jesus being a myth.”

  “I read that news report too. It was about that giant maggot in New York City, right?”

  Tyrone nodded. “No, I heard that was Ahone- he’s a Powhatan god up in the Algonquin area- the people up in the tri-state area are worshippin’ him from what I heard. I started to get strange dreams at night ever since this Glooming began. I couldn’t quite figure it out until I met this guy, he was a supply sergeant and part Seminole. That guy told me all about this god, and when I heard it, I felt something inside of me stir up, you know? I bought the medallion from the guy. We don’t know too much about him, but I think if we just say a prayer to him now and then, maybe he’ll give us his blessing or something.”

  Fred rolled his eyes. “Yeah sure, go ahead and worship those pagan gods. I really don’t care.”

  Tyrone looked at him straight in the eye. “You never thought about it? You never considered changing your religion since these old gods came back and proved to everybody that they exist now?”

  “My parents were religious, they’re Polish Catholics,” Fred said wistfully. “I just never had the time to think about it. I just never felt a need to worship anything. I was too focused on the real world.”

  “Yeah I know. So was I. But these gods are in the real world too. If we go up against those Aztecs, I figure that if all else fails, maybe the Master of Breath will protect me, you know what I mean?”

  Fred laughed again. “Well, if they come and we ain’t stoppin’ ‘em, then I got my own get outta jail free card.”

  Tyrone was confused for a minute. “Say what? A get outta jail card? For reals?”

  “Yeah, lookee here,” Fred said as he pulled out a jade necklace from underneath his field uniform. “This is an old Aztec charm that I bought from a Mexican a few weeks ago when I told him I was being deployed to defend the border.”

  “What in the hell are you gonna do with that?”

  Fred kept on giggling. “Well, if the worst happens, and I get captured or something, then all I’m gonna do is pull this out and show it to them. I’ll tell them I’m one of them.”

  Tyrone shook his head in disbelief. “So you think they gonna just believe that crap? You crazy motherfu—”

  The radio suddenly began to squawk. “US military, come in, over! Anybody! Help us! Oh God!”

  Fred instantly turned his attention back to the radio as he put the headset back on. “This is Opie Four, we are reading you. Identify yourself, over.”

  “This is Lovelace, we’re the ones in Lovelace! You gotta help us now! Heeelp!”

  Fred took out a codebook from his fatigues pocket. “Lovelace, I need you to calm down. Please authenticate.”

  “Oh God! Hang on, lemme get those codes! Hang on! Here it is … Echo Zulu Niner, over!”

  Fred nodded. It was the right code. “We are reading you loud and clear, Lovelace. What’s the sitrep?”

  “They’re coming! I can see ‘em!”

  Tyrone was off his chair and crouched down beside Fred as he tried to listen in the conversation. “The Aztecs?”

  Fred waived him away as he concentrated on the radio. Lovelace was just a few miles ahead of them, just beyond the abandoned airport. “Lovelace, calm down. We need more intel. Can you identify what you’re seeing, over?”

  The voice on the radio was becoming more hysterical. “It’s a goddamn army of monsters out there! They’re headed this way! We don’t even need our scopes, we can see them with our own eyes!”

  “Shit,” Tyrone hissed as he grabbed his binoculars and ran to the edge of the western wall of the rooftop. He began to quickly scan the area but all he could see was a mist beginning to form in the horizon. “I am not seeing anything, but visibility is getting worse.”

  Fred continued to speak into the radio receiver. “Lovelace, can you get a headcount? We need to know how many of the enemy is out there and what type, over.”

  ‘I-I think I can see hundreds of them coming out of the fog,” the voice on the radio said. “No, it’s thousands, tens of thousands! Most of them are men, I think … they’re wearing those goddamn Aztec costumes and they’re carrying those goddamn sword clubs … oh shit, I can see one of those women demons, the ones who look like skeletons! We’re getting the hell outta here!”

  Fred frowned as he keyed in the receiver once more. “Lovelace, can you give me their exact position? I can request close air support or some artillery, over.”

  Tyrone kept looking through his binoculars. Both men soon heard some gunfire out in the distance but it was very faint. Since Lovelace was behind the municipal airport, Tyrone wasn’t able to get a clear view using his field glasses. The mist that had been a distant part of the horizon was now drifting towards them. It was like a grey wall that obscured everything behind it.

  “Lovelace, come in,” Fred said. “Lovelace, we need you to look at the
map grid we provided to you and give us some coordinates for a fire mission, over.”

  The radio was still on but all they could hear was static. Fred tried calling the volunteers a few more times, but there was no response.

  Tyrone was moving from one end of the roof to the other as he tried desperately to see if he could spot anything. He silently cursed to himself since their commander had failed to requisition any sort of nightvision equipment for them. He knew that the other squads in the platoon had them, but their observation post had somehow been overlooked. Both he and Fred had been clamoring to get at least just one night vision goggle for their helmets, but the Lieutenant kept saying that there was a shortage, and therefore a delay until they could issue any more of them. Now that the actual fight was on, they were caught with their pants down. It was a typical military screw up.

  Fred was so frustrated, he almost threw the receiver down on the ground. “Goddamn it, they ain’t answering! Those chickenshits must’ve run away the moment they got their last message in.”

  Tyrone didn’t take his eyes of the binoculars as he kept observing the area. He could hear sporadic gunfire out in the distance. “Can you get Hillsboro then?”

  Fred switched frequencies on the radio once more and then he tried to call in the rest of the squad. After listening to a few minutes of white noise, he gave up. “They ain’t answering either, something’s up.”

  Tyrone’s jaw trembled a little. Maybe they were all alone now. “Try Dallas HQ.”

  Fred’s head bobbed as he realized that he forgot about their main unit. He quickly shifted frequencies again. “Dallas HQ, come in over. This is Opie Four. Come in, over.”

  The calm voice that answered on the other end of the line was an immediate morale boost for both of them. “This is Dallas HQ. We are receiving you, Opie Four. Please authenticate, over.”