Cthulhu Dawn: No Surrender.
Prologue.
The first that Private Steel and Corporal Englishman, of the Queen’s Own Fifth Heavy Infantry, knew about it was when their enemies rose from the dead to fight, again, against them. Something was definitely amiss.
“Damn it, Tommy, I’ve killed that bugger twice already,” growled Private Steel.
“Aye,” said Corporal Englishman, running a hand thoughtfully through his huge moustache. “ I reckon I’ve shot him once or twice myself, so did the sergeant… God bless his bastard soul.”
“Bloody un-sporting.”
The Nazi hordes surrounded them; hundreds of grey, blood stained uniforms and hallow faces. Ammunition was short, as was food and water. And orders, all the officers were dead, except for Captain Mc Coolman who was too busy roaring obscenities and waving his sword to be of any use.
“I’m getting sick off this,” said Steel, firing again into the advancing ranks.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Tommy, “they may get up again after a bullet, but lets see them get up again after I’ve set to ‘em with me bayonet.”
With that, the corporal leapt out of the foxhole and charged the enemy. Private Steel was not far behind him.
Decades earlier, a vast and unspeakable evil dreamed in its crypt far under the Atlantic Ocean . From its ancient underwater prison it reached its foul dreaming mind across space and time, and rested it on the trenches of World War One’s Western Front. It delighted in the pain, and destruction and chaos, but it was looking for something, although it did not yet know what.
Then it found it, as its mind searched the tormented souls of that battlefield. It found what it was looking for in the soul of a German Company Runner, a young soldier who was fierce and courageous, but more than that. It had found a soul of unusual purity and determination: purity of evil, and determination towards a cause- any cause. It found a soul that would tear the world apart in the name of a dark dream, a soul without reason or compassion but with limitless energy and directness of will.
There is an evil that is growing and waiting, and it wants our world. It wants to destroy us.
But that is not aloud.
Chapter One.
“The Devil sends the beast with wrath, because he knows his time is short.”
Book Of Revelations.
“May the Elder Gods preserve us!” exclaimed Professor Alan Helsing, his pipe falling from him lips.
It was early morning on the 23rd of October, 1942, outside the windows of the British Museum the London
Professor Helsing, curator of the Non Existent Wing of the British Museum, had arrived at work to find the magnificent building filled with the panicked hush of people trying to pretend that something horrible had not happened; the type of frenzied quiet of people being very busy with not knowing what the do, and the tension of waiting, hoping, for someone to come along so that it was no longer their problem. That someone was normally Alan Helsing, and he was used to that, and he was used to this sort of tension, so he had smiled politely at the staff who tried not to catch his eyes as the strode along the many corridors and stair ways to his office, his grey trench coat billowing in his wake behind him. A special guest in the museum today, he thought, maybe bad news about the war on the radio, or someone’s dropped some particularly rare artefact. It was not until he had entered his mahogany panelled office that the bliss of his ignorance had been shattered and the enormity of the situation had hit him.
Inside his office he had found his young secretary, Miss Molly Wine, standing by the large bay windows. She was running a slender hand nervously though her long, red hair, and had nearly jumped when he walked in. When she told him the news, her big, green eyes had flashed, and her full, red lips had been contorted by the effort of keeping a calm face.
“May the Elder Gods preserve us,” he said again. Trying to steady him self. “Tell me again, what has happened?”
“The Necronomicon has been stolen, sir” she said, in little more than a whisper. “The lock of the back door of the museum was picked, the security guards were overwhelmed, one is dead, the secret door to the vaults was found and opened, the safe was picked, and the Necronomicon was stolen. And it was the Nazis: the Nazis have the Necronomicom.”
“Dash,” said the professor, his pipe back in his grip, and now fully calm and back to his usual, reserved self. “How do we know that it was the Nazis?”
“One of our security guards heard them, he was hiding at the time… they were armed and very aggressive, you understand, sir. There can be no doubt… they were very… enthusiastic, about it, apparently.”
Professor Helsing took stock of the situation, dragging on his pipe and looking thoughtfully first at his secretary, then out of the window. One thing was for sure, this was very bad.
“Call MI X,” he said.
“I already have done, sir.”
“Good, what did they say?”
“That they already knew, and that they have agents working on it right now.”
“Good show.”
Thirty-two minutes past four, am, 23rd of October 1942. Shepherds Bush Station, London
The platform is filled with sleeping people, sheltering from the bombs which have fallen all night above ground. Row after row of people huddled under blankets or over coats, one old lady was awake, she clasps her hands together in silent prayer, a baby could be heard crying in the distance. A tattered newspaper lay on the dusty floor, the headline reads,
“ANOTHER VICTORY FOR THE QUEEN’S OWN FIFTH!”
In a cloud of steam, the train pulled into the platform and the passengers disembarked. A dozen gaunt factory workers, an Air Raid Warden, a civil servant, and two well dressed, blonde, tall and stocky young men.
The factory workers, civil servant, and the air raid warden made their way past the huddled crowd, many of which were stirred by the noise of the train, up the steps and out of the station. The two well dressed young men stood, waiting, at the platform. Both were wearing leather gloves and trilby hats, the shorter of the two men (a mere six foot) was holding a black leather satchel; the taller of the two kept looking at his pocket watch.
The taller of the two men was Lieutenant Duetchard of the Gestapo. The other was Captain Sapten of the S.S., in his bag he held the book which he has been told will help the Germans win the war, that is all that he knows about it- he prefers to think about the reassuring weight of the pistol in his inside pocket.
Two minutes passed, and a short man in a bowler hat with an umbrella joined them on the platform, he is late for work, he has nothing to do with any of this. Deutchard looked at his watches again. Another minute passes. Deutchard looks at his watch. Another minute. Deutchard looks at his watch again, one of the sleeping people wakes and coughs loudly, another baby starts crying. Deutchard looks at his watch again, damned British inefficiency, he thinks. The train is one minute and 13 seconds late.
The train was heard approaching; Deutchard put his watch away and sighed
The train stops, and the two men rush onboard. At that moment two figures, a lady and a gentleman, run down the steps into the station and rush through the crowd. As the train slowly pulls away, they reach the platform. The gentleman curses loudly, then they run along side the train. The gentleman was holding an ebony walking cane in his right hand, with his other hand he forces open the last door at the rear of the train. He jumped inside, grabbed the ladies hand, and pulled her onto the train.
The gentleman has long dark hair tied back by a blue ribbon, a slightly hawkish nose, and a lantern jaw and is immaculately dressed in a silk shirt, pin strip three piece suit and black greatcoat with red silk lining; his entire appearance belongs to a Victorian dandy and is painfully out of place in 1940s London. The lady is very tall, dressed all in black with a great deal of lace, which contrasts beautifully with her ivory skin, and compliment her wavy black hair and icy, dark eyes. They look at each other for a moment and catch their breath.
“Get the scoundrels,” said the gentleman in a voice that could only have been moulded in the finest aristocratic family and most expensive private schools.
The lady nodded, and pulled a pistol from under her jacket.
The train was packed full of commuters; men, women and children packed into the poorly lit carriage, and those who were not alarmed by their sudden appearance on the train, were panicked by the sight of the pistol.
“Don’t panic,” she said in a voice like silk, “we are British.”
That did not help a great deal, but at least no one tried to stop them as they pushed their way through the crowded carriage. They reached the second carriage, which was equally crowded, packed and panicked. The conductor, an elderly man with a bushy moustache, pushed his way towards them.
“What is the meaning of this, sir?” he asks.
“We are British agents,” the gentleman said wearily,” we believe that there are Nazi agents on this train, and we simply must detain them immediately… Now, please get out of our way, and calm these people down.”
The mention of ‘Nazi agents’ troubled the crowd even more, a girl screams and many of the people who were sat down stood up. There are cries of ‘where’, ‘help’ and a few of ‘get the blighters’.
“This will not do,” said the lady.
“In the name of the King!” the gentleman shouted, hitting the silver top of his cane against the roof of the carriage. “In the name of the King, sit down, be quiet, get out of our way and remain calm!”
Maybe the traditional British reserve finally kicked in, or maybe it is the natural authority in the gentleman’s voice, or maybe it is the cold look in the Lady’s eyes and the way she holds her pistol, but, whatever it was, the crowd calmed down and sat quietly or stand to one side to let them pass.
“Thank you,” said the lady.
At the front carriage, Lieutenant Deutchard and Captain Sapten had heard the commotion and knew that something was wrong.
“We are being followed,” Sapton whisperd in German.
“Indeed,” replied Deutchard, looking at his watch, “but we reach our station in two minutes, we must only hold them until then. We will have friends waiting for us there, then it is not far to the dock.”
Sapten nodded, his bag feels very heavy, and with his spare hand he reaches for the comforting handle of the pistols under his jacket.
The lady and the gentleman made their way through the third carriage. They had been briefed for their mission only an hour ago, and they had not been given full descriptions of the enemy agents, but had seen them board the train. They knew that they must be at the front (indeed, the lady could sense their presence, and afterwards the gentleman would claim that he could smell them), and that their best chance of stopping them was to get them before the train reached the next station, which they knew was very close. The difficultly lay in knowing how to do that. They reached the door of the final carriage.
“Driver!” the gentleman shouted in a voice that would have carried across any battlefield, “stop this train in the name of the King!”
The lady’s gaze swept across the carriage, she can see the two German agents. She raised her pistol, but could not get a clear shot for all the passengers.
“Deutchard, Sapten,” she said, in voice far quieter than her companions but which carried just as clearly, “surrender immediately, your situation is hopeless.”
Deutchard replied by drawing his pistol and firing at them, which missed and hit a man in the arm, who fell backwards into the aisle. Sapten drew his pistol and forced his way into the driver’s compartment.
“If you do not take us to ve next station,” he said to the driver in passable English, “you vill die.”
“I would rather die than help you,” said the driver, not even looking backwards.
“Are you sure?” Sapten said with a grin, “I know how to drive a train, ve mild inconvenience would be out veighted by my pleasure in shooting you.”
The driver turned to see a gun to his back and the grinning German.
“I’ll do as you say,” he said reluctantly.
“People normally do.”
Deutchard joined him, and they both faced the door into the carriage with their pistols levelled. The lady and the gentleman made their way towards them. The gentleman pulled on the top of his cane to reveal that it was, in fact, a swordstick
“Everyone get down,” said the Lady, “this will be over soon.”
The lady fired at the Germans, but they ducked around the edge of the door.
“Come out and fight like men!” roared the gentlemen, brandishing his sword- which earned him a shoot from the concealed Germans, which missed and smashed the window beside him.
The train slows down, and the light at the windows showed that the station is close by.
Before the train reached a stand still, the Nazis forced the driver’s door open and jump out onto the platform, Sapten pausing only to pistol-whip the driver on their way. They fired a shot into the air to clear the crowd on the platform, then ran along it, brutally pushing aside anyone in their way, and up the stairs.
A moment latter, the gentleman and the lady were off the train and after them. The lady did not risk a shot in the crowded station.
They reached day light at the top of the stairs in time to see the two Germans climb into a black car as it sped away.
“Dash,” gasped the gentlemen, looking desperately around the empty street.
A few seconds latter, a motorbike came along the street. The gentleman ran at it, and tackled the rider, knocking him and the bike flying across the road.
“Sorry, old chap,” the gentleman says, mounting the bike,” in the name of the king and all that.”
The lady mounted up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist, and they raced after the car, which was well over a hundred yards ahead. The car went round a corner, and they lost sight of it for a moment, Fortunately there was practically no other traffic on the street. After a few seconds they caught up, and a shot was fired from the car, tearing through the gentleman’s coat. They raced along the length of the Themes, towards the docks.
Soon the car left the road, and droving through the docks. It drove straight through a pile of crates, narrowly missing a dockworker. The bike was close behind, until another shot from the car took out the front wheel. The bike shuddered, veering to one side, the two British agents jumped off, landing heavily on a pile of ropes, just before it slid into the river. The lady and the gentleman were on their feet again in time to see the car drive along a peer. They ran after it.
The car screeched to a halt at the end of the peer. The two German agents and a short man in a black shirt got out of the car and piled into a boat. The bloats engine thundered into life, and they were on their way out to sea.
The lady and the gentlemen, bruised and exhausted, stood at the end of the peer as the boat sailed away. A little out to sea, they spotted a zeppelin hovering above the water with a rope ladder hanging out, waiting for the boat.
The lady and the gentleman were Lady Alice Payne and Earl Lloyd Well, MI X’s best agents. And they had failed.
And in its crypt on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean , the great Cthulhu laughs and dreams his vast, vile dreams. A world in ruin and an endless feast of enslaved human souls
Noon of the same day. The Non Existent Wing of the British Museum
Professor Alan Helsing sat at the stuffed leather chair behind his cluttered oak desk, his pipe fuming at his lips. He had smoked nearly an ounce of tobacco since the morning. He was a man in his early forties who looked far older, his unruly hair was mostly grey, as was his short beard, his face was lined with decades of deep thought, only his eyes looked young- they had a distant, hardness which Molly could never understand or look upon for long. His wrinkled hands, which bore several silver rings, trembled slightly. And he couldn’t stop looking at his secretary as she paced up and down his office. His own wife had died during The Blitz two years ago, and whilst he constantly tried to restrain his attraction towards Miss Wine, her beauty was a source of reassurance to him. He missed his wife dearly, his work meant that he constantly surrounded by darkness of the worst kind, and he saw his country face ruin every day since the war started, it was good to know that there was still some beauty left in the world.
Every few seconds the words, the ‘Nazis have the Necronomicon’, flashed through his head like the memory of a nightmare
Although her constant pacing suggested great nervousness and frustration, there was a silent strength in the way Molly Wine strode up and down the thick red carpet of the office. Ever so often she gave the professor a smile which she intended to be reassuring, but he found slightly seductive. And sometimes, when she smiled, it was like she knew something that no one else did, something that suggested that, really, everything was okay.
My God, thought the professor, she is only nineteen, and she is probably far wiser than me.
The radio was on quietly. Earlier, it had be playing opera, which the Helsing found relaxing, and Molly sometimes hummed along to. Now it announced the excessively optimistic and cheerful midday news, which Helsing always found to be horribly contrasting with the bombed out city and tired faces that he saw on his way to work ever day.
“… casualties were minimal. In North Africa Lieutenant General Montgomery launches his first assault against Rommel’s troops today, elsewhere in Libya the Queen’s Fifth Own Heavy Infantry scored another glories victory for Britain
“More tea, sir?” Molly suddenly asked, as though it were a revelation.
“Please… things always seem better with tea.”
When she left the room, Helsing stood up, turned off the radio, and gazed out of the window, it was, at least, nice weather.
No sooner had she returned with the tea, them two men walked purposely into the office. They worn grey suits, grey shirts, grey shoes, grey leather gloves and dark glasses, their head were shaved and their faces were blank.
“Good day to you,” said one of the men, “you will come with us, please.”
There was an awkward silence whilst Molly put the tea down, and Helsing took a sip of it.
“I shall have my tea first,” said the professor.
“You will come with us now, please, we are from-“
“I know who you are,” the professor said, raising his voice slightly, then smiling at Molly, who was a little taken aback. ”We shall have our tea first, take a seat.”
The men remained standing.
Helsing and Molly finished their tea in silence, then got their coats and were escorted out of the building, by the back door, and into the back of a grey van with blacked out windows.
The van stooped after twenty minutes, it was not a comfortable ride. The men opened the door and Helsing and Molly Wine found themselves on a filthy street in White Chapel, outside an inn marked ‘O’Marlie’s Tavern’. The men gestured to the door, and they walked in.
The tavern was as filthy inside as the street outside; the floor was sticky, the tables covered with dust and dead flies covered the windows, except for the ones which were boarded up. Three crippled soldiers drank beer at the bar, two children played dominos with an old woman who stank of gin. In the furthest, darkest corner, Earl Well and Lady Payne were sat at a battered table covered with empty pint glasses. The Earl had a pint in his hand and a cigar in his mouth, and the Lady smoked a cigarette from a long, ivory cigarette holder and sipped tomato juice.
The professor made his way towards them, and Molly followed. The two men stood silent, blank and motionless at either side of the door.
“Dashed MI X goons,” whispered the professor, “I hear that they only employ people so stupid that they will never, never, ask questions.”
As they approached the table, Lloyd Well stood up, threw his cigar over his shoulder, and bowed to them, nearly spilling his drink.
“Earl Lloyd Well, C. B. E, Knight of the Garter, MI X special agent and servant of His Majesty the King- God Bless him!- at you service,” he said,” and may I present, The Lady Alice Payne.”
“Good day sir, Doctor Helsing at your service, I believe we have met before…”
“Miss Wine,” she said, as the Earl kissed her hand, “delighted.”
“Please take a seat,” the lady said, “I am sorry if we have inconvenienced you. We had not the time, nor the mood, for subtlety”
Professor Helsing took at look at her, whom he had not met before, then took another look. He did not consider himself a lecherous man, merely an aestheticist. There was something about the wave of her raven hair and the way her dark, cold eyes contrasted with her white flesh… and, he had to admit, the way her legs seemed to go on forever. The Lady could tell what he was thinking, but she was used to it.
“Where the goons really necessary,” asked Molly, “you have our phone number.”
“Your line may be bugged,” the lady said simply, “and we wished to speak with you in person, and to do so somewhere we were guaranteed not to receive any unwanted attention… the exact choice of venue was Lloyd’s.”
Molly Wine took a moment to look carefully around her. Firstly she noticed the utter dankness of their surroundings, no one would expect them to be here, that was for certain. Then she noticed that all four of them wore silver crosses around their necks, and guessed that none of them were regular church goers, so they were there for protection. Unlike Professor Helsing, she had not been involved with MI X before, other than a few, rare and often cryptic, phone calls. The two aristocratic and eccentric agents sat opposite her where not what she would have expected, they should have beards or something. There were twelve empty pint glasses on the table, she reckoned that they had all been the Earl’s, all beer was currently watered-down by law, so that equated to about nine pints, but it was safe to say that he was drunk. That hit her as unprofessional, then, far more unnervingly, she realised that he was probably drowning his sorrows. He intrigued her, she wondered where all the small scars on his face and hands came from, and how someone who appeared so arrogant and foolish got to his position. The Lady, at least, was sober, but there was something unnerving about her that she could not put her finger on.
“May I get you a drink?” Earl Well asked.”
“No thank you,” Professor Helsing replied. “Why did you bring us here?”
“You may require one latter,” said Well, draining the last of his thirteenth pint. ”There are two reasons why we have met you; firstly I regret to tell you that we have failed to prevent the Nazi agents from leaving the country with the Necronomicon.”
“Dash,” said Helsing, lighting his pipe.
“What happened?” asked Molly. “How did you know it was missing?”
“Can you imagine how horrid it is for a psychic when something quite so vastly, cosmically, cataclysmic as the Nazi’s getting hold of a book like the Necronomicon happens?” said the Lady. “It is like remembering that one had left the gas on, but a thousand times worse. We knew the moment that they got their hands on it, the fact that they were in the country with that intention has been giving some of our people headaches and nightmares for days. In addition, the book itself practically radiates an evil aura; with a little effort it is possible to locate it. That is how we located the Nazi agents.”
“Indeed,” said the Earl. “We found them in the underground and followed them onto their train; then, under a constant hail of bullets, we chased them on the train, then by motor bike, but the scoundrels escaped by blimp… so very close…”
“Couldn’t you have shot just them?” asked the professor, in an off hand manner.
“Sir! I do not use fire arms” the Earl exclaimed.
“Why ever not?” inquired the professor.
“I consider it unbecoming of a gentlemen, and I, sir, am a knight, it is dishonourable. Once, I tell you-“
“I did, by the way, try to shoot them, but we were in places crowded with civilians” interrupted the Lady, knowing that she was about to hear a story that she had heard many times before.
“-Once, I tell you, I was challenged to a duel, pistols at dawn, and still I did not dishonour myself by using fire arms.”
“How?” asked Molly.
“I used an unloaded pistol. I let the fellow fire first- which took a little nerve let me tell you- then I charged him, and beat him to the ground with my pistol… oh, as I was saying, two reasons; the second is that we need your help.”
“I think I shall get that drink now,” said the professor.
Helsing and Well, went to the bar together. The Lady offered Molly a cigarette, which she declined.
“Is that your new secretary, old boy?” Earl Well asked with a wolfish grin when they reached the bar.
“She has been for the last three years, yes.”
“Lucky. Has it been that long since last we met? Oh dear… two pints of ale, barkeeper, if you please.”
“Special occasion, is it squire?” the stout barman asked as he poured the pints.”
“Indeed it is. Today is probably the worse day in the world ever.”
“Is it now?” said the barman, taking his money. “At least it’s not raining.”
Professor Helsing put down his pipe and took a sip of his ale when they sat down, and said, ”so, why do you require our help?”
“Because you are the only living person who had read the book and not gone mad, and because you know more about it than any one in the world,” answered the lady. “How did you avoid madness, by the way? Anyone else who has tried to read it ended up institutionalised or a suicide.”
“After I finished reading it, I went on holiday in the Lake District , read The Bible and drank a great, great deal. What do you need to know?”
“Firstly, was the copy in the British the Museum really the real Necronomicon.”
“Yes, the only surviving, true, full copy in the world- probably the original, in fact. British explorers found it in Africa over a century ago, they all died strange and horrific deaths…”
“And exactly what could the Nazis do with it?”
“Unspeakable evil… forget about them using it to win the war, this is far bigger than the war. They could raise the dead, summon things far worse than demons, make themselves immortal, destroy the entire world. Anything else you need to know?”
“Yes, a great deal, but for now, how long would it take them to use it?”
“First they would need to translate it, that could take weeks, if they are lucky, it is written in the most archaic Arabic and with terrible hand writing and spelling- what with being written by a mad man and all… Then they would need certain items for all the major rituals; the ring of such and such and the sword of so and so, most of those have never been found, I hope. And some of the rituals can only be done in certain places or at certain times, phases of the moon, eclipses and such… I would say that they might be able to start using it in less than two months, but it could be a year before they could do anything truly apocalyptic.”
“That, at least is, a relief.”
“And what, may I ask, do you intend to do about it?
“We don’t know yet…Give us time for a little research, a bit of thought. Come to our office tomorrow morning, we’re going to need you, whatever it is.”
