Authors: Edward Teach
The warrior who had been her passenger had used his pump-action shotgun to suppress most of the defenders, keeping them cowering behind cover as the rest of the warriors rushed into the makeshift compound. Gretchen rushed behind the barricades as another warrior plowed his vehicle into the cargo van that the last survivors had been using to protect themselves. No sniper fire was pouring into the center of the perimeter, and she assumed that her warriors had already engaged the snipers, so she boldly strode towards the last survivors.
There were four men, two women, and three children that cowered before her. One man moved forward and shot Gretchen cleanly through the face as she stepped out of cover, the bullet passed through one cheek and into the other, taking a few teeth with it by the force of its passage. She reeled from the shot and emptied her magazine in a series of wild shots at the group. By the time she recovered her warriors had gunned down or subdued the rest, and only one man and two children remained.
Gretchen called out to her warriors to allow the man to fight, and they handed him a machete as he looked at Gretchen with a confused look on his haggard face. She spit a mouthful of blood on the ground and drew forth the largest of the kitchen knives she had first used on her family, and smiled wickedly. The warriors cheered as the man rushed her with the machete, and battle was joined.
The man aimed a clumsy slash at her head, which she ducked easily. Gretchen took the opportunity to plant the knife firmly through the man’s left armpit, and in moments he was stumbling and wheezing as blood filled his lungs. He took another swipe at her, which she easily turned away with her own knife and reposted with a messy slash across his forehead. The man kept swinging wildly, though his vision was obscured by the blood that had seeped into his eyes. Gretchen dodged several of the attacks before slipping around behind the man and grasping his hair with one hand to pull his head back and using her other hand to plunge the kitchen blade deep into his neck.
Gretchen looted the man’s corpse, as was her right by combat, and found a deck of cards in addition to a wallet full of currency long past its usefulness. She opened the deck and the first card was the King of Hearts, known to many as the Suicide King. Her bloody fingers had covered the card, and in the swirls of drying fluid she saw a portent. The Aesir had spoken of the Wyrd, a force that drove the unfolding of the world, a shadow of the divine power that lies within all things. In her old life she had known about Atlantic City, a gambling destination, though she and her people pushed west. There was only one city of cards that lie in the west, and that was Las Vegas. As soon as she spoke the word the other wolves growled in their ascent, and she felt Fenris quicken within her. Yes, they must go to Las Vegas and find the Suicide King. If they were to slay him or aide him remained to be seen.
As the man died Gretchen knelt down and spoke to the frightened children. She told them that the Aesir demanded valor from everyone, even those fated to die at the hands of true warriors. She told the children that the man she’d just killed had died well, with a blade in his hand and honest blood pouring from his body. As the warriors ransacked the camp for supplies, ammunition, and fuel, Gretchen spoke to the children. The warriors had moved the children to the top of the city bus while they did their work. She told them about the Bifrost and the Aesir, and that she and her wolves were heading west to meet their fate. Already there were several zombies who had appeared in the distance, drawn by the blood and conflict. Gretchen gave each of them a firearm with a single magazine, and whispered to them that they must earn their survival.
The warriors sped west in a cloud of dust, leaving a graveyard of corpses, empty fuel tanks, and spent shell casings. The two children stood atop the bus as a horde of walking dead moaned below them, and watched as the departing warriors faded into the horizon.
GOSPEL OF THE TENTACLE
The King in Yellow looked down at his mustered legions and his dark spirit swelled with pride and malice. Hundreds of men and women, the full strength of the Sons of Hastur, stood in tight formation before him. A man who used to be called Robert, who had thought of himself as a survivor, had found the Pallid Mask in Farmington. He could not help but to put it to his face and be consumed by it. Such was the power of the Yellow Sign.
Robert’s personality had been devoured by the energy that lie deep within the very fibers of the mask itself, and within moments of placing it upon his face he had been transformed into the King in Yellow. The tentacles had reached into him from the Outer Dark and blackened his soul with terrible knowledge, and he saw the Yellow Sign. It was his charge to open the way for the grasping darkness, the ancient beings from a time before time. The world of the sun was coming to an end, and now was the time to strike.
He snapped his fingers and a supplicant brought forth his sacred book, the Gospel of the Tentacle, known to some by its more common name, the Necronomicon. He opened the book, and began to speak in a language that no human mouth should have ever attempted to speak, and yet the mask worked his jaws into the proper positions and though the pain was excruciating he uttered the words of power.
After the two prophets had slain the first King in Yellow the Sons of Hastur had been dealt a mighty blow. They were already sorely pressed by the psychopaths who seemed hell-bent on standing in their path, and the teeming masses of the walking dead was an ever-present threat. The Sons of Hastur were in need of an advantage, and finally that time had come. The purpose of the assault on Farmington was to raid a small private library, kept by a wealthy collector, and in that library rested the Gospel of the Tentacle. The collector had died screaming as zombies tore him to pieces once the Sons had breached his meager defenses, and the commandos made quick work of the walking dead once he’d perished.
Now the King in Yellow would be able to speak the words, paint the signs upon the world, and bring the Shoggoth into the spirits of his loyal soldiers. They would need every advantage possible to assault Las Vegas, which was their final destination. Within the city of gambling and vice there lay an exact replication of the pyramid at Giza, constructed in accordance to the sacred geometry that the modern engineers could not have possibly fathomed. The Yellow Sign cult of business moguls that ran Las Vegas had built the beacon by which the King in Yellow would be able to awaken the ancient ones, and though the cult had been destroyed when the city was overrun, the building remained intact.
The gods of this world had arrayed against the Yellow Sign, and the gore-seers had reported that they’d seen visions of Horus rising. They had already warned him that the psychopaths were taking guidance in their madness from the Aesir, and the scraps of spirit that once was Robert remembered the reports of Zombie Jesus roaming the southwest. The King in Yellow knew that the Sons would need to be more than they already were, and with the Gospel he could give them the power to overcome all obstacles.
The ritual was simple, and involved each of the Sons, be they male or female, engaging in horrific sex acts while the King in Yellow spoke the words of power over them. For several hours the camp of the Sons was awash in a cacophony of screams and moans as captured survivors and zombies alike where subjected to the ritualistic treatment of the devotees.
As the sun rose on the next day the light of dawn shone upon the carnage, and the unconscious Sons of Hastur began to stir from their slumber. The devotees began to rise to their feet, many of them seeming to marvel at the new sensations racing through their bodies. Each one of them could feel the power in their muscles, and knew that they’d become far stronger than any human being could hope to be. Their canine teeth had grown to become fangs, and their senses of sight, smell, and hearing had grown to superhuman acuteness. The King in Yellow smiled wickedly as his army of vampire-shoggoths screamed in unison and bayed for blood.
The city of Las Vegas had, much like the other major cities on the planet, been completely overrun by the hundreds of thousands of zombies that had risen when Zombie Jesus walked the earth spreading the cannibal corpse plague. Even after six months of ceaseless siege warfare there were still holdouts of survivors who yet struggled. The vampire-shoggoth army routed out the survivors as if the Sons of Hastur had been transformed into bloodhounds. This was not far from the truth, as the blood of the living called to the shoggoth like a beacon, and led them straight to the holdfasts and hideouts of the survivors of Las Vegas.
Within a week the much of the city had been swept clean of survivors, their bodies served up to the twisted desires of their conquerors and their blood feeding the tentacled horrors that rested within the flesh of the commandos. The Sons still had hundreds of thousands of zombies to contend with, and that first week was a bloody struggle indeed.
The commandos breached the city with armored vehicles, smashing through the various roadblocks and barricades that remained from the initial outbreak. The rest of the force moved from neighborhood to neighborhood, eliminating survivors, feeding the hunger within and gaining ever-more power as they progressed. Soon the army found its way to the Las Vegas Strip, and there the fighting was at its thickest.
The psychopaths of Las Vegas numbered in their hundreds, and did not die so easily as the survivors or legions of zombies. Casualties on both sides were tremendous, though the vampire-shoggoth’s superhuman abilities were the telling factor that won them victory. A Son of Hastur was easily worth four or five of the psychopaths, and within that first week of battle the psychopath presence in the city was destroyed.
The King in Yellow looked out upon his makeshift kingdom and smiled. It had been costly, but they now controlled the Luxor Casino, which was shaped to be the pyramid at Giza, and the seat of power for the King. From here he would complete the rituals in the Gospel of the Tentacle and awaken the ancient gods from their slumber in the Outer Dark.
A FEAST FOR CROWS
Gretchen’s heart thrummed with adrenaline, and something more bestial stirred in her soul. All around her a horde of vehicles inched forward as they threaded through the city streets, the warriors of a dozen broken clans that had been driven from Las Vegas by the armies of the King in Yellow. Her brothers and sisters had spoken of the vampire creatures that fought under the Yellow Sign and how they’d stormed the city in force, killing warrior and zombie alike. Gretchen had gathered the warriors of the broken clans and added them to her group, and now they were several score stronger.
It had been a hard journey across the southwest, and her wolves had been tested as they came closer and closer to Las Vegas. Giants had risen and walked the earth, and no bullet or blade could harm them. The giants crackled with power, and wherever their touch fell any who stood to bear it was lost. It was as if the very touch of the giants would cast out the spirit of warrior and zombie alike, leaving only a corpse. It grated on her nerves to avoid enemies, though there was no fighting them, and it was a fool’s errand to keep trying.
They had taken a twisted route to reach the city, and along the way picked up more and more warriors to join their horde. In the distance they could see the black pyramid that was the Luxor Casino, and the wolf within Gretchen howled to her senses that this was her goal. There were no speeches or calls to arms among the warriors, all could feel the pull towards battle and glory. Gretchen’s wolves all stayed close to her, their common nature giving rise to a pack mentality that had made them such an effective group.
The streets were choked with abandoned vehicles and rubble, so progress was slow. The city seemed empty of zombies for several miles, until the horde began to draw near the barricades that had been erected by the Sons of Hastur. The vampires had stacked cars several deep and several high, binding them together with bolted or welded scrap metal to create effective barricades between them and the thousands of zombies that surrounded the casino.
The first of the warriors reached the barricade as the horde began to circle the casino area, and battle was joined. The warriors made wide passes at the walls, allowing the various gunners to take shots at the defenders, though the tactic proved less than effective as the zombie hordes made maneuvering their vehicles very difficult. The vampires remained within the safety of their barricades and returned fire with deadly accuracy. Within the first several engagements the horde’s assault momentum had ground to a halt as wave after wave of warrior vehicles attacked the wall without success.
Casualties mounted quickly, and Gretchen could see that defeat was looming, and the battle had only just begun. Seeing her brethren slain had awakened the beast within her, and the voice of Fenris had begun to sound more and more like her own. She suddenly brought her truck to a stop and shut down the engine. Her wolves followed suit, and left their own vehicles to draw near their pack leader.
Gretchen closed her eyes and let the sound of the battle wash over her, letting her other senses come to the fore. She could smell the stink of the rotting zombies, the burning gunpowder, and the dark corruption of the vampires. Suddenly the wolf within shook itself free of its shackles, and she understood its low growls within her soul. Gretchen began convulsing and frothing at the mouth, and she did not fight it, as if letting go was the most natural thing she had done. Gretchen, who had stood before the rainbow, relaxed her grip on her body and let Fenris take hold. She fell to the ground as her body twitched, soon followed by her wolves who also fell to the ground shaking.