Shoggoth 2- Rise of the Elders Page 7

  ***

  “So, your old friend Neville Stream is at it again,” declared Vice Admiral Jack Hawkins.

  Ironwood smiled at his sarcasm, at his disdain for the politician. “Congressman Stream is prospecting again, for votes from a wounded electorate. More aptly put, an electorate he plans to wound and then pose as their rescuer.”

  “The man will stop at nothing to achieve power.”

  “Even murder,” Ironwood responded knowing all too well the Congressman’s motivation. And though he had just said it, he understood that in the Admiral’s case, it went without saying. Hawkins occupied a new, spacious office at the NWC. A bloodied conflict had grossly marred his previous workplace. Two assassins, allegedly sent by Neville Stream, although no evidence could be produced to link the congressman and the hired guns, met with a disastrous end. One of the hit men was permanently crippled when his right knee was blown to bits, while the other had the top of his skull shot off, the products of Jack Hawkins adroit defensive maneuvers. The Admiral’s former pristine administrative center had been redecorated with blood, bone, and brain matter.

  The one feature familiar to Ironwood in Hawkins’ new HQ was the flags. Between Jack Hawkins and Thomas Ironwood, along the edge of a very long desktop, was a row of flags approximately six-inches in height on tiny wooden pedestals. Each flag represented a different country that the Vice Admiral had visited or where he had once been stationed. There were forty-five of them in all. A few officers on the base had confided to Ironwood that the flags and the huge desk presented an intimidating barrier fortified by the Admiral and anyone seated opposite. The thought had never occurred to the Professor; rather he looked at them as topics of conversation, a source of idle chit-chat. Maybe that was why the base Commander and the Professor interacted on equal ground.

  Admiral Hawkins examined the color printouts that Gwen Gilhooley had given Ironwood with a magnifying glass. “It's a TBM, a tunnel boring machine, also known as a ‘mole.’ They can bore through anything from sand to hard rock. What do you think that S.O.B. is up to now?”

  “Same as before, Stream is after a shoggoth. The narcissist’s grandiose personality along with his exaggerated sense of self-importance imagines that chaos and turmoil are the keys to gain attention, success, and power.”

  “He sickens me,” Hawkins gravely added. “The thought that a member of our U.S. House of Representatives would cause a massive, deadly lifestyle shift to create an administrative opportunity is unconscionable.”

  Ironwood recalled, with revulsion, his last conversation with the Congressman. His insane plan was to release a shoggoth on an unsuspecting world, an army of them he had hoped, foul creatures the size of wooly mammoths consuming all lifeforms like grains of rice. “His goal, as you well know, was to become the first dictator of the United States, dear God, possibly ruler of the earth. He once told me that he did not imagine his sovereignty as cruel and ruthless, rather, ‘ruling with a velvet glove over a steel fist.’”

  “A political benefit,” the Admiral stressed. “Thousands, perhaps millions of people would be killed while he becomes their shining white knight, protecting the multitude from the horror.”

  “The image of a guardian, a deliverer, built upon a foothill of fake news and a mountain of lies.” The room fell silent, and Ironwood stared at the Admiral. He was waiting. Hawkins, his old friend, his forehead furled in thought, appeared to be formulating a plan. What was he thinking?

  Vice Admiral Hawkins unlocked a file drawer in his desks and removed a red folder, marked TOP SECRET. He opened the loose-leaf folder and took out three sheets of paper. “This is your non-disclosure agreement,” he revealed with a grin. The base Commander turned to his left and inserted the legal document into a paper shredder. “It is the only hard copy. I thought it wise to keep it here and out of the NWC’s database.” The document destroying machine hummed cutting the three sheets into thin ribbons. “The chad from this contraption is incinerated daily. Nothing classified ever leaves this office.”

  Amazed as well as grateful Ironwood asked, “What do we do next?”

  “It’s not ‘we’ Professor, it is you! You are well aware of my tenuous position here. One false step and our beloved Congressman will have me facing a Congressional Oversight Committee on trumped-up charges, and with the sycophantic media in his back pocket, I wouldn’t stand a chance in defending myself. After that my usefulness will go to hell in a handbasket. If I went to DC with what no doubt would be treated as a cockamamie story about Neville Stream wanting to declare Marshall law and take over the country, they’d lock me up. No, my friend, I will be most effective covertly.”

  “I was hoping,” responded Ironwood forlornly, “that Gwendolyn Gilhooley, Lieutenant Jason Riggs and I could work together again. We made an excellent team last year when combating Stream’s shoggoth, but I suppose that is not possible.”

  “You are correct. Gilhooley is no longer under my command,” the Admiral granted, “and I am opposed to assigning a family man to a stealth mission. I don’t mind telling you Professor that this must be carried out as quietly as possible. One mishap and we’ll all be swinging from the yardarm. Those two won’t do I’m afraid, but I know of a couple of men that are right for the job.”

  “Who?” he asked; anxious for the answer.

  “I’m going to keep that under wraps for the time being. But I’ll tell you this, you have worked with them in the past, and they are good, damn good. I must keep this strictly voluntary. The men that agree to this undertaking will be put on furlough; shore leave in the desert so that it won’t be a military operation. Let me know when they are needed. It was my birthday last week. Call to wish me a belated happy birthday when the deed needs to be done, that will be our GO code, and they’ll be at your door the next day well equipped.”

  “I don’t like this one bit,” Ironwood confessed. “I didn’t want to return to the tunnels. Nevertheless, I don’t have a choice.”

  “Of course, you do Thomas. Walk away from it. You are not forced to go back down there again. Even though employed at the Naval Weapons Center, you’re a civilian and not duty-bound.”

  “Yes, I am. I love this country, and I don’t want this megalomaniac ruining the US of A. Besides, my background and knowledge of the tunnels and shoggoths requires me to lead the expedition. One more thing though, how are we going to get back down there?”

  “That Professor, is for you to decide.”

  ***

  Gideon Ward lit an Opus X Double Robusto. An expensive and rare cigar, one of life’s great pleasures, that he allowed himself. They were grown on the renowned Chateau de la Fuente family farm with a zesty and delicious chocolate brown Dominican wrapper. He longed to accompany it with a few fingers of a single malt scotch, but that would have to be for another time.

  Night had arrived, and Gideon stood in front of Ironwoods crazy house looking at the mess of junk across the street. Abandoned cars littered the small community where most people lived in trailers or reclaimed mining shacks. The end of the day shadows were unnerving. The town after dark was so dissimilar from that of the day, he decided, that it might as well be an entirely different locale. It was as if there existed two distinct Darwins, completely detached from one another only meeting at dawn and dusk to exchange places. The evening was windless, pallid sand curved upward and downward, frozen waves of the sea, he mused. Visibility was excellent. Moonlight played as sunshine on snow. It was not a Cheshire Cat moon; the silver disc shined a floodlight illuminating the desert floor casting silhouettes off the unwanted items. What specters hid in the shaded gloom?

  The four of them were waiting for Ironwood’s return. Amy and Dutch had brought additional chairs from the house and arranged them around the Professor’s desk in his Airstream trailer converted office. They had made photocopies of the old newspaper articles that the three pilfered from the Inyo Register. The four were ready for the meeting. All they needed was the addition of their fifth member.

>   Gideon observed the headlights of Ironwood’s Jeepster speeding up Fulton Street. I wonder where in the hell he has been? The Professor had left in a hurry declaring that he’d be back soon. That was several hours ago. There was a slight chill in the air and although Gideon was glad for his return, and the thought of the trailer’s interior warmth imminent; he was angered that he would have to dispose of such a good cigar. “Damn!” he uttered as he ground it out under the heel of his boot.

  ***

  The five of them sat around Ironwood’s desk. Amy had dragged it to the center of the office trailer, and with chairs, on all sides, it served as an adequate conference table. Gideon thought it would have been a lot less trouble if they had set-up in the Professor’s and Amy’s dining room, but the old physicist wanted to be near to his books and computer.

  “I was a skeptic when it came to your ESP dream hunt, but the old babe in the bikini gave us a clue to follow,” offered Gideon as he dealt out several sheets to each.

  “What are these?” asked Ironwood rifling through the photocopies.

  “Copies we made of articles obtained from the old newspaper office in town,” he answered.

  “That place is locked up tighter than a drum,” challenged Ironwood.

  “Dutch found the key,” Gideon remedied.

  Dutch folded his beefy arms across his chest and smiled.

  Amy selected a sheet of paper on top of the stack and read out loud, “Inyo Register, January 12, 1899. Edward McManus, a miner, working the Lane property near Darwin, showed a strong indication of insanity last week. J.J. Gunn and others secured him. He gashed his throat with a knife or a piece of tin, but without fatal results. He was brought to Independence, where he is being cared for. The incident occurred while Mr. McManus was attempting to dig a well.”

  Professor Ironwood looked at Pemba, and she shrugged her shoulders.

  Amy grabbed the next photocopy and read further, “August 30, 1901. A man named Fitzgerald dynamiting a large boulder by the Darwin Wash turned up missing when he did not return after several days. His animal came back to Darwin without him, raising suspicions. He was found five miles from his home, well out in Panamint Valley, buried on spot. He was 60 years old.”

  “Where is this leading?” questioned the Professor.

  “I was saving this one for last, Thomas,” replied Amy. She looked at her companion hesitantly. “June 5th, 1897, the Darwin Sun, which two years later became the Inyo Register,” she added. “Victor Nash was laying pipes conveying water into town when his lodger Phillip Clervey, a former resident of Morley House, disappeared and was never heard from again.”

  “All disturbances of the ground,” Pemba added frightened.

  Gideon glared at Ironwood detecting concern on his features. “What is it, Professor?”

  Ironwood looked up from the last newspaper duplicate. “Your brother told me about Phillip Clervey. He was the last owner of the Isaac Morley Estate.”

  “Morley Estate?”

  Ironwood sighed, he appeared to be a man that was about to have a great weight lifted from his shoulders. “A house, that once stood in the desert, not far from here, where Alan and I discovered an entrance to the tunnels in its cellar. According to the story, Clervey was last seen running through the town of Darwin screaming incoherently. He must have stayed with this Victor Nash fellow after vacating the estate.”

  “I thought you were not supposed to tell us anything about the tunnels, Prof, your secrecy oath, remember?” objected Gideon Ward.

  Ironwood was steely-eyed, “That has changed Gideon.”

  “Then let’s go to this old house and go spelunking,” he argued.

  “Can’t,” Ironwood disputed. “It’s on the NWC property, and all of us would not get clearance. What's more, that access was permanently sealed as well.”

  “Then we are getting nowhere,” he grumbled.

  “Possibly not. I’ve heard of this Victor Nash. He was a bit of an entrepreneur. Brought water to the town and employed several people at his mine. The town’s lore tells of his last digs. One that he kept secret and worked on in solitary.”

  “Where is it?”

  “At the edge of town. His old miner’s shack is partially concealed, built into a knoll.”

  “Is it accessible?”

  “We can get there, no problem, however, if you think that the barricade to the Inyo Register was tough, by comparison, the entrance to Nash’s old place will become a formidable challenge.”

  Gideon and Dutch exchanged winks and nods. “It hasn’t stopped us yet Prof,” proclaimed Ward.

  ***

  Knoll was an understatement, reflected Pemba, it was a mountain ridge. The house belonging to the one-time miner was buried deeper than the Professor’s home. Only the front of the abode was left exposed to the morning sun. Enormous automobile size rocks, pressed into the earth, surrounded the facade. Massive wood beams, resembling railroad ties crisscrossed a daunting door held together with iron pegs and bands of steel.

  Victor Nash’s once place of residence was not difficult to locate. Nothing was hard to find in Darwin. You didn’t need a map. The town was laid out in a close grid of roadways and dead-end streets. Nash’s home was located at one of the dead-ends. A short dirt trail with only one lodging, Nash’s miner shack. A sign on the street corner read, “Dragon Way.”

  “Interesting?” Observed Amy. “To name a street after a mythical creature.”

  Pemba shivered. Something in the sign and possibly within the locale, gave her a chill. “I feel that it is more than that. It is a symbol of the devil.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked. Amy stared at Pemba with wonderment and disbelief.

  “From the Book of Revelations, ‘So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.’”

  Silence ensued as all of them stared at her. Somehow, Pemba knew that she had struck a chord with them all. Before Pemba could voice her concern about unlocking the barrier she had to jump aside allowing Gideon Ward to back that big military vehicle of his close to the boarded-up opening. Amy and the Professor looked on. They appeared dubious of the potential as well as the ambitious attempt. The JLTV came to a stop a few feet from the barricade. Dutch jumped down from the truck’s passenger side cab, undid the tarp on the companion trailer and removed a red towing strap. Gideon came around the other side of the vehicle, and the rest of the group watched as he and Dutch threaded then wrapped the strap through and around the steel bands and wood beams.

  “This bad boy,” announced Gideon as he attached the red strap to a hefty metal bar beneath the JLTV, “has one helluva towing package, four-wheel drive, and an ultra-heavy-duty suspension system.”

  “Will those straps hold, Gideon?” asked Ironwood.

  “Not to worry, Prof, they have the tensile strength of several tons. Just one thing though,” he yelled. “Everybody get back, way back!”

  Chapter 13

  - Groundwork -

  Within the Deep State, the name Neville Stream was respected; amongst the establishment elites it was feared, and as far as he was concerned, one was as good as the other. And now he was about to become a hero of the electorate. Congressman Stream smiled. The Washington swamp, the Deep State, is bigger, more vicious and more dangerous than even a cynic could imagine, he basked in the thought, because he was pushing all the buttons.

  The United States Senate empowers the Committee on Armed Services with legislative oversight of the nation's military, including the Department of Defense, military research, and development as well as nuclear energy and every sad S.O.B. on that committee were in Congressman Neville Stream’s back pocket. Although Stream was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Congressman could initiate a scandal on any one of them overnight that would guarantee instant disgrace and expulsion. Holding on to power was the desire of every politician. With power came wealth
, and he had dirt on all of them, total control.

  A major result of the Congressman’s “control” was turning big rocks into pea gravel. The Mole could tunnel deep into the earth at a rate of 50 to 60 feet per day with two shifts working a total of twenty hours. He had to settle for half of the production rate though because he was limited to the number of men in his clandestine operation. The TBM was the latest model, nothing but the best for the Congressman, he held forth to himself. Stenciled on the side of the yellow behemoth in olive drab lettering were the words, PROPERTY OF THE U.S. MILITARY.

  Neville yawned, the Tunnel Boring Machine was only a minor result of his achievement. He had also acquired an ERT, an Electrical Resistivity Tomography unit, a sort of MRI for below surface exploration with an estimated cost of fifty-nine million, likewise military property. The device creates subterranean digital images. With it, he prized triumphantly, his crew was able to explore the mountainsides for possible access tunnels without getting their hands dirty.

  An old passageway, dug in the early 1900’s, in the hopes of striking silver, was located by the ERT during the second day of their exploration. When none of the valuable ore could be found, the cave was terminated three-hundred-twenty-seven feet into the mountainside. As the Congressman’s windfall making attributes would have it, the old mining channel saved them days of digging since it pointed in the direction he desired, toward one of the many five-sided tunnels beneath the Mojave Desert. They were going to explore the dark places most people avoid. Places where shoggoths roamed.

  ***

  The opening cleared, they all stood to stare at the interior of the dilapidated structure. Like most everything in Darwin it was empty of life, the only residents were long-forgotten memories and dust, lots and lots of dust.

  Pemba stepped through what she sensed to be a gateway. A few of the elders in Darwin had warned them not to go playing around the old building. "Strange things happened," they warned, "when the living step foot in a dead building.” Were they stories made-up to scare children? Perhaps, although she sensed, there was a smidgen of truth to the tales. There was a different smell within. Unlike the dry, dusty scent of the town, the old miner's shack was musty and damp. The air inside was humid and heavy, nothing like what she had started to grow accustomed to in the arid desert