Story HourPost your ongoing tales from your campaigns, and read those from others for inspiration. Lots of other RPG boards post "Story Hours", but this is where it started!
This story hour is from “The Evil Stars” in Cthulhu Now by the late Keith Herber. You can read more about Delta Green at Delta Green. Please note: This story hour contains spoilers!
Kurtis "Hammer" Grange (Fast Hero/Gunslinger) played by George Webster
Joseph “Archive” Fontaine (Dedicated Hero/Acolyte) played by Joe Lalumia
Jim “Jim-Bean” Baxter (Charismatic Hero) played by Jeremy Ortiz (Jeremy Robert Ortiz)
Despite the fact that I wrote scenarios months in advance, sometimes I get caught by surprise. And this session, the players finished the previous scenario faster than I anticipated. I had my notes, so we dove right into the next one. The challenge was that I knew we wouldn’t finish the second scenario, so I had to find a natural break. Fortunately, this scenario does just that.
The Evil Stars is a scenario loaded with cheese. It features an evil rock band who makes a deal with dark mythos forces in the most complicated way imaginable. God’s Lost Children, whom I introduced in a much earlier scenario, uses its tours across the U.S. to lead the crowd in a mystical chant that in turn empowers standing stones. The chant idea is actually pretty cool – the notion that a major death metal star is hiring cement trucks to build massive standing stones at each concert isn’t nearly as a cool. But far be it from me to shrink from a challenge. I can only go to this “heavy metal really is evil” well so many times, so I crammed it full of every cliché I could think of.
First, we actually start with the biker gang, Satan’s Sadists, as part of the At Your Door campaign. This is a nice introduction to the gang and gives the agents a reason to care what they’re up to. After the gang attempts (and fails) to steal the baby dark young they were transporting to a Majestic-12 front company, the agents get a lead on the gang. They’re not hard to follow, since they’re security for God’s Lost Children.
But I didn’t stop there. I shifted Star’s role to a much more important one, turned Billy into a killing machine, and created a narrative that took a page from Terminator: Star wants to snitch on Satan’s Sadists, but it’s up to the agents to retrieve her. And when Brianne (changed from Brian, because I have a rock star female miniature) Lochnar of God’s Lost Children finds out, she calls in a Mythos favor to set Billy on Star's trail. What ensues is a long string of violent interludes that culminates in a battle of the bands.
Defining Moment: Hammer discovers that knowledge can be a lot more threatening than a gun.
Relevant Media
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001037WSE?ie=UTF8&tag=michaeltresca&linkCode=as2& camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001037WSE]Let Sleeping Gods Lie[/ame]: By Darkest Hillside of the Thickets.
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0933635516?ie=UTF8&tag=michaeltresca&linkCode=as2& camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0933635516]Cthulhu Now[/ame]: Source of the Evil Stars scenario.
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0933635648?ie=UTF8&tag=michaeltresca&linkCode=as2& camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0933635648]At Your Door[/ame]: Source of Full Wilderness scenario.
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0954752627?ie=UTF8&tag=michaeltresca&linkCode=as2& camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0954752627]The Book of Unremitting Horror[/ame]: Source of Organ Grinder.
Violet flows from the wound in your chest
Black is the hole in which you rest
Your heart of gold was ripped in two
Soaked in the sickness that is you.
--Colour Me Green by Darkest of the Hillside Thickets
“So Fiona said this was something we should see, huh?” asked Archive as they made their way through Full Wilderness’ headquarters.
Hammer nodded. “She’s come a long way from not trusting us.”
“Memory loss will do that to you,” Archive said ruefully.
“Not everyone has memory loss, that’s why we had to leave Jim-Bean in the car,” muttered Hammer. They hadn’t anticipated on returning so soon, so it was best if Jim-Bean laid low for the moment. The staff of Full Wilderness would undoubtedly recognize him from his last “terrorist” incident.
Jatik welcomed them into his office and got right down to business.
“Full Wilderness has for several years sponsored a variety of natural science researches, especially investigations into insect ecologies, energy budgets, and symbiotic relationships. You see, a symbiotic relationship is merely one between two species in which each benefits from the association—for instance, in the bottle-tailed squid some species of internal bacteria generate the luminescence for the squid's photophores, and in turn are fed by the creature. Beneficent human intestinal bacteria are another example. The organization does this to contribute its share in the pool of scientific research needed to save the planet. I do not know how well-acquainted you are with the ongoing crisis, but I can assure you that recent efforts to downplay the significance of a degrading environment stem from scientific misinterpretations and the grossest of economic motives, Every day lost cannot be regained, and may in the end prove our undoing."
“What does this have to do with us?” asked Hammer.
Jatik continued: “This last week I received a personal call from a Dr. Harold Gall, who swore that some of Full Wilderness's money "was being misused for the foulest purposes." About just what he was alarmed was not made clear. Fearing exposure and loss of employment, Gall sent a communication by private courier in support of his charges.”
Jatik handed Archive a computer printout.
“Dear Mr. Jatik,” read Archive aloud. “This situation is so upsetting to me that I am unable to work effectively. I really don't know how to reply to your questions. There are so many things to explain, and so many places I could start. Now that I have raised the issue, I need a few days to compose a methodical presentation which you can use to create a plan of action. Per the enclosed exhibit, please follow the instructions carefully. It has to do with the work being done here. Enough of these things have died that I can fake the death of one more.”
Archive hesitated. “There’s a paragraph entitled ‘feeding instructions.’”
Jatik nodded sagely. Hammer encouraged Archive to keep reading.
He shrugged and continued. “The specimen currently eats a diet of 6 parts raw hamburger, 4 parts freshly-killed flies, and 1 part bone meal, in the total amount of 1 kg per 10 kg of body mass. It does not appear to ingest liquids directly, though a colleague believes that it does in higher humidity. Since acquisition, it has grown slowly—weight it weekly and increase feedings proportionately.”
“What eats freshly killed flies?” asked Hammer.
Jatik cleared his throat. “Dr. Gall disappeared approximately a week ago. His dented and damaged car was found abandoned al Seacliff Palisades Park, in a quiet residential neighborhood. Based on evidence found in the car, the police believe that Gall committed suicide. They make that guess mostly from the evidence of Tail's car. I can supply the name of the detective in charge of the case. Sgt. Jack Bolling."
“So someone killed him to shut him up? What did he give you, Jatik?” asked Hammer.
"The affair is even stranger than you may be guessing,” said Jatik. He uttered a brief command into a phone, and two aides pushed in a short dolly. It bore a crate covered by a tarpaulin.
Jatik dismissed the two men. As he swept back the covering. Jatik couldn’t refrain from a flourish, but his "Tah-dah" was flat and ominous, as it might be: inside wriggled an eighteen-inch-high tentacle THING.
As soon as the tarpaulin was lifted, the thing leaped across the container towards Hammer in a single lunge, squeaking fiercely, its tentacles gripping the sides of the cylinder in a fruitless effort to snag such toothsome food.
The creature was in a travel container, a Plexiglas cylinder about a yard wide and a yard high, walls an inch thick, closed at either end by stout hydraulic clamps and double-latched. A few breathing holes broke the seal.
“What the hell is that?” asked Hammer.
Jatik shook his head. '"This arrived by messenger the day that Gall disappeared. What is it? Where could it have come from? What could it be for?”
Archive pointed a shaking finger at the thing. “That…that is unnatural.”
"It put one of my employees in the hospital,” said Jatik. “Gall must have somehow drugged the thing. It arrived here limp, in this cylinder. We thought it had died. No heartbeat. Then it suddenly jumped our resident zoologist and bit off her left thumb. The teeth are razor sharp. Now she's suing us because we wouldn't kill it to get her thumb back."
It was indeterminable if the thing has a front or a back, just meaningless knobs and bumps and hollows. Drool and pus seeped from various mouths and orifices: a foul stench filled the air. Its multiple mouths opened and shut with voracious clicks and disturbing slurps. After a few minutes, the thing begins to squeal incessantly.
Putting the tarpaulin back over the container brought more piercing screams. Jatik sighed and called in the aides, who remove dolly and contents.
“The existence of the monstrosity is more than enough reason for Full Wilderness to be concerned. I shudder at such a thing turned loose in a favorable environment. I of course thought of the helpful government agents and was sure they would be interested.”
Hammer frowned. “We’ll take it from here.
As they left to go, Jatik said over their shoulders: “Full Wilderness has tens of thousands of local and national contacts. We are as much a philosophical organization as one devoted to practical ends, and consequently we have influence at every level of government. If you need the way smoothed, we can help."
Somehow, that bothered Hammer more than the creature did.
Hammer, Jim-Bean, and Archive drove down a large black truck down a four-lane thoroughfare--two lanes each northeast and southwest—past dusty commercial offices and light industry.
“You see that?” asked Jim-Bean, looking back over his shoulder out the window.
“What?” asked Hammer, eyes on the road.
“Motorcycles. Lots of ‘em.”
The thrum of motorcycle engines was suddenly all around them.
Three motorcycles pulled up on either side of them. Each motorcycle was driven by a massive biker wearing leathers, a beard, sunglasses, dangling skull-and-crossbones earrings, confederate flag patches, imitation Iron Crosses, and handlebars that end in spiked mace heads. All of the biker gang wore jackets with a cartoon face of Satan flanked by Capital S’s on their backs. One biker-man's T-shirt read “GLC”.
Riding behind two of the bikers were tough-looking young blondes dressed less remarkably. Each woman carried a medium-sized flat box with the butt end propped against her right thigh. One biker-woman's pants had a two-inch circle carefully cut in the seat, through which showed skin and a neatly-tattooed yellow triskelion.
“Hammer,” said Archive, “there’s a black van in front and behind us—“
The truck jolted as the van behind them hit its bumper. The van in front began to slow down.
“They’re boxing us in!” shouted Hammer.
Gunfire peppered the back of the truck and there was an explosion. Hammer yanked hard on the wheel, struggling to keep the truck under control.
“I got it,” said Archive, whispering a chant to himself.
Suddenly the truck righted itself again. “What did you do?” asked Jim-Bean.
“I healed our truck,” said Archive nonchalantly.
“Take care of the bikers!” shouted Hammer. The van in front of them slowed down, ramming their bumper.
Jim-Bean focused on the bike to their right. The biker took a sudden sharp turn, losing control of the vehicle as it smashed into the bike behind it. Both vehicles flipped, causing a pile up behind them.
Archive pointed at one of the bikers, still chanting. Sparks arced from the engine and the biker peeled off.
“The vans!” said Hammer through gritted teeth. Another tied exploded from gunfire, and this time Archive didn’t have time to repair it. “Stop the vans!”
The beast under the tarp began to shriek.
Archive inscribed something on his palm and held it out to the back window. Seeing his palm, the driver of the van yanked the wheel hard, taking out another bike and peeling off pursuit.
Hammer drew his Glock from his shoulder holster and, in one smooth motion, blew the tire out of the adjacent motorcycle. It skidded to a stop.
The truck lost control, spinning sideways to a stop. The van in front of them pulled over. One motorcycle was still coming at them.
“Steady,” said Hammer. He took careful aim…
Hammer fired just as the biker closed on them. The front tire exploded, bucking his motorcycle forward and hurtling the rider up and over the truck.
“Our truck is shot!” said Jim-Bean, inspecting the tires. Men in dark suits and sunglasses, carrying 9mm parabellum pistols, filed out of the back of the van. They opened fire, further peppering the truck.
Another tire blew. The thing in the back squealed piteously.
“Don’t hit their van!” said Jim-Bean.
Archive chanted and a swarm of buzzing insects spiraled down from the heavens onto the men.
“What the hell is that?” asked Hammer, firing on them.
Jim-Bean rummaged through his rucksack. “A diversion.” He snapped on a gas mask. “Speaking of which.” He held up a tear gas grenade.
A second later the grenade was spiraling in front of the van.
Jim-Bean strode through the cloud, firing his pistol into the foreheads of the gagging men. He then grabbed the driver out and tossed him aside.
Archive pointed, and the buzzing swarm descended on him. When it lifted, there was nothing but bleached bones.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
Jim-Bean hopped in. The engine was still running. “Looks like we’ve got our new ride…”
Archive and Hammer hoisted the beast into the back of the van and took off.
The biotechnology firm Zymvotek was a five-minute drive away. The agents pulled into a new industrial park, one of those campus-like affairs, with freshly-dyed grass and newly-purchased trees. They stopped before a silver-and-black, block-long building with a twelve -foot-high orange “Z” looming beside the main entrance.
The guards directed them to a loading dock, where they were greeted by two people in white lab coats, far down the side of the building. They passed out visitor passes to everyone.
“Oh great,” said Hammer. “It’s your girlfriend.”
“Not. My. Girlfriend,” said Jim-Bean through gritted teeth.
Dr. Lisa Howell had improved her looks since they last met, changing her haircut and even putting on makeup. She was cute, in a geek girl sort of way.
She smiled at Jim-Bean as the other lab assistant trundled the thing out of the back of the van. It began squealing again.
“So you got transferred, huh?” asked Jim-Bean, trying to make polite conversation and get Howell to stop smiling at him.
He was being nice; Howell was running a virtual reality server on a crystal matrix AI. It had nearly cost Howell her life. The saving grace was that the entire server system had been destroyed by the FRACTAL GODS virus, so there was no evidence of wrongdoing. Still, Majestic-12 punished any failure, including being in the wrong place at the right time. Her transfer to the opposite coast was a mild slap on the wrist.
Howell nodded. “At Zymvotek, we mostly study the commercial possibilities of bacteria—as food for humans, of course, and that's how the company began, but also as oil-eaters, selenium-fixers, mineral-concentrators, that sort of thing. Until a few weeks ago we had a division dedicated to cosmetics tests on animals. Everyone was glad to halt those tests, and the facilities are still intact: Corporate doesn’t know what to do with them until next year’s budget plan is complete. We can use this area for several months without interference: I've already gotten the space allocation."
They entered a large room, silent and empty except for lab benches, utility connections, and stacked rows of gleaming stainless steel cages numbering in the hundreds.
Howell’s chatter ended abruptly when the assistant removed the tarpaulin and she actually saw the creature in the cylinder. Her jaw dropped in delight.
"Sprague said this was something special, but I could never have dreamed of this! This is no recombinant product, gentlemen." she chuckled happily to herself, and began to make plans. Jim-Bean was abruptly forgotten.
“Have fun,” said Hammer. “In the mean time, we need to track down that biker gang. They somehow knew what we had in the truck. That means there’s a leak.”
Archive nodded. “I looked it up. Those bikers were members of Satan’s Sadists. They’re also security for God’s Lost Children—“
“GLC?” asked Jim-Bean. “One of those guys was wearing a shirt with GLC on it.”
Archive nodded. “God’s Lost Children. Harking back to such elaborate ’70s rock acts as KISS, Pink Floyd, and Alice Cooper, God’s Lost Children is as much a visual tour de force as an act of pure sonic aggression — which is exactly why their handlers at Grandeur Records have pumped millions of dollars into making the band one of the top acts in the world. Through constant media exposure, the whole process has taken less than six months.”
“I remember them,” said Hammer. “We played their record backwards…”
“Secrets of N’Kai,” said Archive, nodding along with Hammer. “That’s how we defeated that statue of Tsathoggua—“
“Sorry, what?” asked Jim-Bean.
“You weren’t there,” they said in unison.
Jim-Bean shrugged. “Oh.”
Archive continued. “God’s Lost Children has a concert tomorrow in Jacksonville, Florida. There are rumors that they incite riots everywhere they play.”
“I bet,” said Hammer. “I don’t like the sound of this one bit.”
“You should see their music video,” said Archive. He clicked a button and an embedded video flashed on their cistrons.
The video was ineptly shot and edited. No attempt was made to synchronize what was happening on the soundtrack with the action on the screen. Most of it was a languorous art-house rolling shot of subway tunnels, trash piled up against walls and sleeping tramps. This was interspersed with images from occult books, mostly woodcuts of Satan and his witches, as if someone had held a video camera directly above an open book. At various points, heavily made-up faces leered into the camera from a few inches away.
Then they saw it.
The thing had its back to the camera and was tearing up homeless people. Then it stopped, like a dog sniffing the air, and turned round. There was no face, just a peeled back skull and something like a huge set of dentures in the middle. Industrial limbs extruded from its shoulders, tipped with whirring claws. It started to stride towards the camera. It moved with a horrible lurching gait, like Sadako from Ringu, as if it were broken on the inside.
The three agents watched, fascinated, when suddenly the thing in the cage started shrieking, causing them to jump. Archive stopped the video, breaking the tension.
Hammer’s cistron rang. A call was being routed to his cell. He stepped outside of the warehouse to take the call. “Agent Hammer.”
“...look, Agent...uh, Hammer, don't put me on hold and don't transfer me to another department...” said a feminine voice.
“Who is this?” asked Hammer.
“Star. Star Pardee. Look, I know something about the attack on your vehicle. My boyfriend was behind it and he found out that I was planning to talk to the Feds. I'm at the Black Dragon Restaurant in Toronto, can you pick me up?"
“We’ll get there as soon as we can.”
Hammer hung up just in time before Jim-Bean, barely within earshot, shouted. “Oh no, I am NOT going on another SPIDER transport!”
Toronto's Chinatown district was south of their hotel, bounded roughly by the thoroughfares of Dundas, Spadina, Queen, and College. Markets, restaurants, curio shops, newsstands, and other places of business dotted the streets, decorating the area with colorful signs--mostly in Chinese. Those of Chinese descent thronged the streets: live fish swam about in window-side tanks; orange- and red-necked barbecued duck and pork hung weirdly in restaurant and market windows: produce stands overflowed with fresh vegetables and fragrant fruits.
The newish Black Dragon Restaurant & Lounge was located in the heart of Chinatown, on Dundas Street. The large establishment featured Tcho-Tcho cuisine, previously unfamiliar to gourmets in the area and something of a hit with those who took dining seriously.
The restaurant exterior was painted a flamboyant gold and red: the green and black inferior was decorated with dragon statues, lanterns, Tcho-Tcho throwing spears, oddly wriggling octopus-like creatures, and so on. Whether the agents arrive for dinner, they ended up waiting in the lounge.
“Tcho-tchos,” said Jim-Bean with a sigh. “You know what we’re going to have to do, don’t you?”
Archive took the bait. “What?”
“Burn it down,” said Jim-Bean.
The Black Dragon restaurant had a gloomy interior, which revealed itself to be less than savory. Pool tables and upper-middle lowlife lurked in submarine depths of smoky haze. Dim table candles illuminated the bar like lighthouses in a fog. In the background, a God’s Lost Children song wailed from the jukebox.
The lounge featured the widely-advertised Window of the Verdant Sylph, a circular glass window reminiscent of a porthole. It was two feet in diameter. Through it could be seen a nude young blonde woman swimming or lolling underwater, regularly rising partly out of the window to breathe. The window was to the left of the bar, against the back wall, high enough above that everyone can see.
The porthole was actually a circular lens, reducing the woman's apparent size to about eighteen inches in length. Given that reduction and the tank's calculated backlighting, the swimmer's intrinsic modesty or immodesty remained a point of contention among lounge regulars.
Hammer noticed during a particularly close pass to the window that a dark patch could be seen on the woman’s right buttock identical to the tattoo which he saw earlier on the biker women.
“That’s our girl,” said Hammer.
“Bartender!” shouted Jim-Bean.
The bartender came over. He had filed teeth that glinted malevolently. “Yes-uh?”
“We’d like to talk to that woman,” said Jim-Bean, pointing at the porthole. He slipped the bartender two hundred dollars.
"She mosetuh swim a time, yeh—p’raps gentles drinkuh? P’raps gentles ituh in din-rom?”
Their table ready, the agents ate an excellent meal, dishes mainly vegetarian or pork-based. Many ingredients were unfamiliar. Archive’s dish was delicious in particular, an odd sauce over green vegetables.
Star had a break every 40 minutes. She left for her dressing room and the tcho-tcho waiter informed them of her availability. Jim-Bean stood up.
“Coming?”
“I don’t want them to think…” Hammer looked around nervously. “You know, that all of us at once…”
Jim-Bean laughed. “You’re so modest. Fine, stay out here. Me and Archive will go in ‘all at once.’” He smirked.
Archive followed Jim-Bean to Star’s room. By the time they arrived she had put on a robe.
When they entered Star’s tiny, dingy, windowless room—not much more than a light fixture, a clothes tree, a day bed, and a stack of magazines – her face went pale. Her hands shook a little as she lit a cigarette. “You got my message?”
“Yeah,” said Jim-Bean. “So you said you have information to share with us?”
Star wandered around, substituting eye contact for mental content. She did too many drugs to be very interested in abstract thought. “It’s not safe here. I can tell you who hired me for the job, but you need to get me out of here first.”
There was a gunshot outside.
Jim-Bean snatched Star’s cigarette from her and took a drag. “That’s our cue. Let’s go.”
“Do you have a plan?” asked Star, her voice rising hysterically.
“Not really,” said Archive. “It’s pretty much the same plan he uses everywhere.”
“What’s that?” asked Star.
Jim-Bean pulled a block of C-4 out of his duffel bag. “Blow it all up.”
A tall, muscular man entered with a pig-like squint to his eyes. He's dressed in the traditional riding leathers of a biker, complete with Satan's Sadists vest. He was huge and muscular, with python-like arms, a bald head covered by a do-rag, and bristling with hostility. In one arm was a fire ax, and a shotgun was in the other. The entire bar went silent when he entered.
“Billy,” said Hammer. He drew his pistols, unnoticed.
“Uh, excuse me suh,” said the owner, a small, shifty-looking tcho-tcho. “No weapons allowed he—“
Billy put the shotgun to the tcho-tcho’s head and pulled the trigger.
The tcho-tcho’s head exploded. People shouted, scrambling for the exits.
Hammer kicked over the table.
“You!” snarled Billy, pointing with his axe. “Where is she?”
“Put your weapons down!” shouted Hammer. “This is your only warning!”
Billy reloaded the shotgun with one hand.
Hammer let loose, firing. One of the bullets punctured Billy’s shoulder. He didn’t seem to notice.
A shotgun blast splintered the table in front of Hammer.
Hammer ducked back behind the table.
The blade of an axe head jutted out right near Hammer’s face. He stumbled backwards.
With a roar, Billy flipped the table effortlessly away. Hammer came up with both pistols cocked…
And Billy froze. Across the room, Archive had just finished a chant that culminated in pointing at Billy.
Billy was stuck in mid-strike, shotgun aimed at Hammer’s head, axe lifted high. Hammer recognized Archive’s accomplishment with a nod of his head and set about tying Billy up.
When he was done, he dragged Billy out the door. Jim-Bean, Archive, and Star met them at the car.
“We’d better go,”: said Jim-Bean. Billy was hog tied, arms and legs tied together, and blindfolded. He helped Hammer drop Billy into the trunk of their rental car.
“Since when are you so helpful?” asked Hammer suspiciously.
“No reason.” Jim-Bean slammed the trunk. “Can’t a guy be helpful?”
“What did you do,” warned Hammer.
“Nothing, let’s go before this guy wakes up. There’s a green box near here…”
Hammer threw the car in gear. As he pulled away, the Black Dragon Restaurant exploded.
Hammer shot Jim-Bean a glare, who smiled sheepishly back at him.
Bekleys Auto Repair appeared to be just another small shop on Toronto’s south side. With its crumbling facade and dirty windows, few people gave the store more than a passing glance. Inside, the repair shop looked even worse, with its peeling wallpaper, creaking floorboards and layers of dust thick enough for mice to ski on.
Many of the people in the neighborhood wondered how Tom and Rose Bekley could support themselves with the meager few customers who wandered in every few weeks. Naturally, the police checked by occasionally to make sure the Bekleys weren’t selling drugs, or fencing stolen goods. But everything was legal and quite innocuous. The auto parts worked even if they were highly overpriced. There just weren’t any customers.
However, Tom and Rose secretly worked for Majestic-12. Green Box #14 was a standard example of the storage facilities maintained by the Majestic-12 janitorial staff.
Jim-Bean and Hammer dragged Billy into the room between them. A nervous Star entered accompanied by Archive.
Hammer nodded at Tom. Tom nodded back and flicked a supposedly “broken” light switch behind the counter. It opened a reader for a Majestic-12 cistron in the bathroom.
Hammer held up his cistron to the reader. The wall slid back to reveal a hidden passage that led to a small elevator. They clambered into it.
The elevator descended one hundred and forty feet down into the sub-sub-basement. The center floor of the warehouse had a small elevator capable of moving a six-foot square box. Below were three work areas.
They dragged Billy to the labs. The small testing and processing lab was common to Green Box facilities. A workshop filled the remaining space. It was stocked with raw materials and electronic replacement parts. At the end of the room were three ten-foot by ten-foot specialty rooms with double airtight doors. They trussed Billy up, upside down, hanging from a hook in the holding tank. Hammer replaced Billy’s plastic handcuffs with steel-alloy manacles. When they were sure he was secure, they closed and locked the massive door.
Archive scribed something in chalk on the doorway.
“What’s that?” asked Jim-Bean.
“A ward,” said Archive. “Just in case.”
“That door is made of steel alloy. If that doesn’t keep him in there, nothing will,” said Hammer.
They brought Star to the barracks. After letting her clean herself up, she sat down in the kitchen.
Hammer listened to her story while Jim-Bean and Archive raided the armory.
“We were hired for the job by Howard Finley,” said Star, taking a drag on a new cigarette. “Finley arranged for us to leave the country for awhile when we were done.”
“So you were paid to steal the creature from us?”
Star nodded. “He paid us a total of $40,000, cash. Not bad for a couple of hours’ work. That doesn’t include the one-way airline tickets to get us out of Samson for awhile.”
“Tell us about your boyfriend in there,” said Hammer.
"I was dating Billy. He's the leader of Satan's Sadists. I don't know what I was thinking..." Star sighed. "But that's when things got weird. Brianne Lochnar, the lead singer of God’s Lost Children, hired Billy's gang as security. We traveled from place to place, and for a little while everything was good. But then the monoliths started."
“Monoliths?” asked Hammer.
"Lochnar goes on these meditations between sets. But it's more than a meditation. She visits ancient burial mounds. Sometimes there’s monoliths already there. Other times, she hires concrete trucks and everything to build them. She even hires artisans to chisel words into them, I don’t know what they say. Then she sacrifices...things. I never saw the rituals until the last time, and that's when I wanted out.”
“What kind of things?’ asked Hammer.
“She sacrificed…” Star shuddered. "Kittens. She slit the poor things’ throats. The sound was horrible! Horrible!" Star shook her head. "I freaked out. Billy slapped me then. I'm convinced Lochnar would have killed me right then and there if it wasn't for Billy, but I heard them whispering and I knew it was time to run. So I fled, and Billy's been chasing me ever since--"
The whole place shuddered just as Jim-Bean and Archive entered the room, loaded with explosives.
“What was that?” asked Jim-Bean.
There was the sound of sparks and a muffled explosion.
“Billy,” said Archive grimly. “He just set off the ward.”
Hammer checked his pistols. “I’ll take care of it.”
Star’s eyes widened. “He got out of that room? The steel alloy room?”
Jim-Bean shrugged as Hammer left to investigate. “Hammer’s taking care of it,” he said confidently.
“Hammer’s not answering his comm.” Jim-Bean loaded a pistol. “Stay close to me.”
Archive drew his Glock and followed a worried Star out the door to the main chamber.
The double doors had been torn off their hinges with incredible force. The proof of impact was evident in Hammer, who lay underneath one of the doors, unconscious. Another door across the way had been struck so hard that it was nearly folded in half.
“The armory,” said Archive. “He’s going to get his weapons.”
“Maybe. I don’t plan to stick around to find out. Grab Hammer.”
Archive dragged Hammer out from underneath the door and onto the elevator in the center of the room, onto the elevator platform. Jim-Bean and Star joined him. He punched the red button labeled UP.
Jim-Bean rifled through his bag.
“What are you doing?” asked Star.
“Leaving a parting gift,” said Jim-Bean. He pulled out a few blocks of C4, with detonators attached. “Courtesy of the armory Billy is raiding.”
Just before the elevated platform cleared the ceiling of the entrance, Jim-Bean rolled the C4 through the opening.
“This is a concrete facility,” said Jim-Bean. “A blast inside this thing will cook everything in it.”
They exited through the bathroom.
Tom Bekley stood at the register. “Got trouble boys?”
“Big trouble,” said Jim-Bean. “You’d better clear out, something big and pissed off just tore through our holding cell.”
Old Tom reached underneath the register and pulled out a shotgun. “You boys go on ahead. Me and Rose will buy you some time.”
“Hey, I appreciate the gesture old man but…” Jim-Bean caught sight of the old woman, who had pulled a huge revolver from behind a can of beans on the shelf. She spun the chamber expertly to check that it was loaded. “Never mind. Good luck.”
Tom cocked the rifle. “Go! Git now!”
They piled Hammer into the car and took off. The radio was turned to a hard rock station and a God’s Lost Children song blared from the speakers.
“Can you see my body
Can you see it grow
Do you see it throbbing
Won't you watch it glow”
“Shut that $#!+ off!” snarled Jim-Bean.
Star turned the radio off.
Archive put his hands on Hammer’s forehead and whispered a phrase. His eyes fluttered open.
“What happened?”
“You got hit by a door,” said Jim-Bean. “Courtesy of Billy.”
“What IS Billy?” Hammer asked Star accusingly.
“I don’t…I don’t know!” whimpered Star. “We were into the occult, all of us, and I think he took some kind of oath…”
“An oath?” asked Archive, his interest piqued. “What kind of oath?”
“It was…unspeakable.”
“Uh oh,” said Jim-Bean, peering in the driver’s side mirror.
“What now?” asked Hammer.
“I think Billy’s catching up to us.”
Archive turned around. “On what?”
Billy was tucked, his newly acquired Harley Davidson motorcycle gunning the engine as it closed the distance between them.
“You know,” said Jim-Bean, “I’m beginning to think having an automotive shop over the vault wasn’t such a good idea after all.”
“I know how to take care of biker gangs,” said Archive. He whispered something and concentrated.
Billy’s bike suddenly sparked, flames licking from the sides of the engine. He lost control, swerving the bike too quickly. It flipped sideways, hurtling Billy to the ground.
He hit the pavement hard, tumbling, rolling, sliding with a chattering screech as flesh stripped away. He hit the guardrail, bounced up, tumbled along the top and then pitched out into space. Billy smashed to the pavement in the middle lane and lay there, face-down. Still.
“Got hi—“ was all Hammer got out. Jim-Bean wasn’t paying attention to the road. He swerved, striking the guardrail as the two lanes suddenly diverged.
The car screeched, one wheel wobbling. Jim-Bean struggled to regain control of the vehicle.
“Stupid rental piece of CRAP,” he snarled. The car began to slow down, the transmission wrecked.
“Guys…” said Star. “I think Billy’s…I think he’s getting up.”
Billy slowly rolled over and sat up. He was a mass of blood, clothing and skin in tatters. Headlights flared behind him and an air horn blared.
A double-trailer Kenworth gasoline tanker smashed him down and under with a crash. Billy rolled, clattering, and the mass blurred above him. He ricocheted between the pavement and the speeding undercarriage until a stray bounce flung him up into the rear suspension. The stunned driver hit the brakes. The air brakes howled.
“Is he dead?” asked Star. “He’s got to be dead…”
“Don’t be so sure,” said Jim-Bean. “I’ve seen a lot of crazy s*&t in my day…”
The body of the driver was tossed out of the side of the tanker, rolling.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Hammer.
Billy was in the driver’s seat. The truck bellowed, down-shifting on the curving grade. The tanker smashed cars in the street, tossing them over the side like beer cans.
Jim-Bean pulled out another block of C4 and kissed it. “If I time this just right...” He tossed it out the car window.
The block of C4 swung in an impossible arc, buoyed by Jim-Bean’s telekinesis. Billy looked up as it sailed past…
It landed on top of the gas tank.
The rear trailer exploded. An unbelievable fireball erupted skyward. Then the forward trailer exploded and an ocean of flame rolled forward, blasting past them.
The shockwave from the explosion nearly flipped their car over. It spun around a few times and came to a stop in front of a Best Buy.
“Come on,” said Archive. “We need to get into that Best Buy.”
“Why?” asked Jim-Bean.
In the center of the inferno Billy struggled violently. His flesh fried and sizzled. He tore loose from the twisted wreckage and collapsed to the ground. He sank into a charred mass, finally still.
“That’s it?” asked Star. “That’s it?”
Archive shook his head. “We need to get to some audio equipment. Now.”
“Audio equipment?” asked Hammer. "For what?"
“The band’s song. Hammer, do you remember how we defeated that statue of Tsathoggua?”
“You mean by playing the music backwards?”
“Yeah,” said Archive. “That was a God’s Lost Children song. Maybe that will work…”
Billy staggered out of the blaze behind them. The last flakes of flesh were falling from him like burning leaves. He was larger now, but that wasn’t the worst part. There was no face, just a peeled back skull and something like a huge set of dentures in the middle. Industrial limbs extruded from its shoulders, tipped with whirling claws. Elements of the truck’s chassis were incorporated into its shoulder and one of its arms.
It was the thing from the video.
“Oh my God!” shouted Star hysterically. “He won’t stop! He’ll never stop!”
Jim-Bean, Hammer, and Archive dragged her screaming into the Best Buy.
Evil Stars: Part 8 – Between a Place and a Hard Rock
Jim-Bean grabbed one of the blue polo-shirted employees fleeing from the store as the THING that was Billy strode towards them, fanged maw chattering madly. The employee’s badge read: HI THERE, I’M BOBBY!
“You, Bobby!” shouted Jim-Bean. “You know how to work a computer?”
Bobby swallowed. “Uh…yes sir?”
Jim-Bean waved his badge at the teenager. “I’m a federal agent and I need your help, right now!”
The word “now” was drowned out by the smash of Billy striding right through the glass doors, its spiked fists easily shattering the glass.
“Go to the back office,” commanded Jim-Bean. He shoved Star after Bobby. “Both of you.”
Hammer and Archive engaged the thing as Bobby ran to the back office. Jim-Bean jogged over to the music aisle and flipped through the “G” section of the CDs.
After a few seconds and more screams from the fleeing patrons, Jim-Bean found the most recent God’s Lost Children album. He ran over to the back office.
Jim-Bean handed the CD to Bobby. “I need you to play this backwards over the audio system.”
“W-what?” stuttered Bobby, who was torn between staring at the faceless thing swinging clumsily at Hammer and the pistol dangling from Jim-Bean’s shoulder holster. “That’s not simple.”
Jim-Bean drew his pistol. “Then you’d better get working on it now, huh?”
There was a shout and Hammer was slammed backwards, hurtling through a pile of display boxes. He didn’t get back up.
“Archive!” shouted Jim-Bean. “Bring him over to the stereo systems!”
Archive nodded, firing his Glock from behind a huge television set. Billy sniffed the air, tracking him.
“And just so you two don’t move…” Jim-Bean drew a pair of handcuffs and snapped it around Star and Bobby’s arms.
“What the hell did you do that for?” shrieked Star, snapping out of her terror. Bobby typed ferociously, sweat beading his brow.
“Looks like I’m up." Ignoring her, Jim-Bean cleared the counter.
Archive went sailing in a bloody arc, his blood spattering as the Bobby-Thing ripped a strip of flesh from his arm. He skidded in a bloody smear on the floor near the entrance.
Jim-Bean fired several shots into it. The bullets penetrated and blood spurted from the wounds, but Billy didn’t seem to care.
One of God’s Lost Children’s songs wailed over the speakers.
“Reverse it!” shouted Jim-Bean.
There was a pause, and then the song switched to an unintelligible warped rendition that strangely sounded like chanting.
The effect was instantaneous. Billy’s skin and flesh bubbled and festered into pustulant blobs
The Billy-Thing barreled down on Jim-Bean like an enraged rhinoceros. Jim-Bean held his ground…
It ran right past him. Jim-Bean kept firing as it passed, plugging it full of bullets. His Glock clicked.
Jim-Bean swore and reloaded.
The Billy-Thing smashed right through the counter and stood, heaving with barely contained rage, over the paralyzed Star and Bobby. It lifted up one arm…
Jim-Bean emptied his Glock into its back. It didn’t even notice.
The spiked fist came down, bursting Bobby’s upper torso like a wet melon. Star screamed and scrambled away, Bobby’s arm still attached to her by the handcuff.
Jim-Bean reloaded. The thing ignored him. It was after Star.
Star ran past him, screaming. Billy was in fast pursuit behind her.
Jim-Bean leaped up and over Billy with ease, using his telekinesis in the same way Valiant had. He landed on a display case full of Playstation 3 games.
Still the music played. The Billy-Thing roared, even as its skin popped and bubbled like a poodle in a microwave. It picked up a television between its spiked fists and hurled it at Jim-Bean.
Jim-Bean hopped to a huge speaker a few feet away, just in time. The display he was standing on exploded in a shower of broken screen and exposed wires.
He reached into his satchel and fished out a block of C4. The quick-time detonators he had retrieved from the Green Box were about to prove their worth.
The Billy-Thing bellowed in frustration and pounded towards Jim-Bean. He threw one of the sticky blocks at it, telekinetically guiding it right into the thing's gnashing maw.
The explosion was spectacular, spewing what was left of Billy's head over electronics. Even then the body merely staggered, taking two more shuddering steps forward. Then, slowly, after one, two steps, it fell backward, collapsing first to its knees and then to the ground.
And still the weird, warping music of God's Lost Children played backwards, set in an endless loop by the late Bobby. Jim-Bean kicked off the speaker, causing it to topple onto Billy's slowly pooling mass of flesh. It further spattered what was left of the biker.
Star screamed.
Oh right. The girl. Jim-Bean sighed.
"That tattoo!" shouted Star, pointing at the yellow triskelion on Billy's naked thigh, just visible beyond the edge of the speaker. "I HAVE THAT TATTOO!"
It was clear that she was present when Billy made the Unspeakable Oath. It was also clear what would happen next.
"Come here, Star," said Jim-Bean, facing away from her as he loaded his Glock. "I need to show you something."
"I made the same oath!" wailed Star. "I made the same oath!"
"I know," said Jim-Bean. Star was hysterical. She wouldn't go down easily. Jim-Bean whirled with his pistol out--
A single shot rang out. Star’s dropped the small snub-nosed pistol in her hand, still smoking from the fatal gunshot she delivered to her forehead. She slumped over in a pool of blood and brains.
Jim-Bean lowered his pistol and shook his head.
By the time the ambulance and police arrived, there was nothing left of Billy but an odd stain on the floor of the Best Buy.
Five hours in the hospital and a bumpy SPIDER flight later, Archive and Hammer limped in behind Jim-Bean to the Hughes Auditorium in Jacksonville.
A security guard directed them to the administration office. Seated behind the desk was a burly, florid redhead. He wore neat and expensive slacks, shirt, and shoes, and an ultra-expensive Italian leather jacket, but somehow the clothes were wrong on him – jeans, t-shirt, and a can of beer seemed more appropriate. A title card on his desk labeled him as Barry Watson.
“Look,” Barry said without looking up from what he was doing, “I really don’t have time for—“
“We’re journalists,” said Jim-Bean.
“Yeah, sure.” Barry didn’t look up. “You don’t look like journalists. We don’t need more reporters from GNN…”
Jim-Bean slammed both palms down on Barry’s desk. “Yeah,” he said forcefully, “GNN.”
Barry finally looked up. When he met Jim-Bean’s gaze, his aggravated expression changed to complacence. He pressed a button on his phone.
“Pete?”
“Yes sir?”
“There are three reporters here. Give ‘em a press pack.”
“But sir, the band is playing right now.”
Barry looked uncertainly at Jim-Bean, as if for approval. Jim-Bean nodded encouragingly.
“Right now.”
“Right away sir.”
A moment later, Peter arrived with their press packs. The packs included three special backstage passes. Each pass was a printed, adhesive-backed, silk patch worn on one’s coat where security could see it. The press pack was a glossy, lithographed folder. It contained 8 x 10 photos of the band along with short, uninformative bios of each. Numerous quotes were sprinkled throughout the promotional material, especially from Billboard, Rolling Stone, and Guitar Player magazines.
They walked out of the office and past the security guard to the back stage of the auditorium.
“Look at the tour dates,” said Archive, pointing at the map of the tour in the press pack.
“What?” asked Hammer.
“They form an upside-down V,” said Archive. The list of dates for a tour plotted a “V” stretching from Samson up to Minneapolis and down to Miami in the south.
“That means something?” asked Jim-Bean.
“It must,” said Archive. “They must be using the concerts as a sort of ritual.”
The present meditation was the second to last scheduled, the eighth of the tour. A blurb gushed that “Brianne’s meditations are famous. With her cycle friends, she heads for the open road and the freedom from cares that intoxicating speed and danger provide. “It helps me get my head on straight,” commented Brianne.
Hammer stopped short. “Wait, I just thought of something.”
He looked up from the press pack. Jim-Bean was already gone.
“I’d really love to see how this place works. It’d be great if I get beneath the stage…”
Jim-Bean stared intently at a roadie named Tom. Tom shook his head. “I dunno man, press isn’t supposed to be down there.”
“Oh come on,” said Jim-Bean, a little more forcefully. “It’d mean a lot to me. I’ll put you in my article.”
Tom shrugged. “Okay, but you can’t tell anyone, right? Just a quick look around and then you’re back in the green room.”
“Sure, sure,” said Jim-Bean.
They both put on noise-canceling microphones and headsets, the kind helicopter pilots used, that were linked by a comm. With the band playing above them it was nearly impossible to hear otherwise.
Tom opened up a trapdoor that led beneath the stage and climbed down a ladder. Jim-Bean followed behind him, duffle bag slung over his shoulder.
“What’s in the bag?” asked Tom, flicking on a flashlight. It revealed a wooden series of angled beams and scattered debris, including endless cables and discarded metal bars.
“Oh, you know, camera equipment,” said Jim-Bean. He looked around. “So this is beneath the stage?”
“Yeah, I don’t know why you wanted to come down here so badly, there’s really not that much to see—“
Tom spun, blood flying from his face as Jim-Bean smashed his head in with one of the bars. He struck him so hard that his headset went flying.
“Sorry, Tom,” said Jim-Bean, standing over the unconscious man. “But you’re going to have sacrifice yourself for the greater good.”
He set to work fastening explosives beneath the stage. The crowd roared above him in response to the band’s latest set.
Jim-Bean was just about finished when he caught sight of someone skulking in the shadows. He finished setting the last explosive and then moved towards the figure.
Jim-Bean let out an audible sigh. “Juarez, come out of there.”
The impeccably dressed and styled latina reporter slowly slipped out of her hiding place, wearing Tom’s headset. “How did you know it was me?”
Jim-Bean smirked. “Never mind that.” He was trying to remain calm. In the darkness, the spreading pool of Tom’s blood was slowly creeping its way along the dirt floor towards one of Nina’s heels. “You trying to get a scoop on the band?”
“Yes,” said Nina. “After the riots at the last concert, GNN is going to do an exclusive on the band to hear their side of the story.”
“Yeah, that’s great,” said Jim-Bean. “Why don’t we talk upstairs—“
“What are you doing down here?” she asked. "And where did you get that headset? I found a spare one down here…"
Nina shuffled her feet, and one high heel was dangerously close to Tom’s lifeless hand, invisible in the darkness of the eaves.
“Reconnaissance mission. I’ll give you a special scoop, but it’s not safe down here.”
Nina snorted. “Not so fast,” she said. “I know what you’re up to.”
Jim-Bean froze. “Up to?”
“That’s right. Last time you set me up for an exclusive and never showed up. I’m not letting you out of my sight this time.” The sparkling white grin Juarez flashed him indicated her interest was not entirely professional.
Jim-Bean laughed it off. “Right, right. Follow me.”
He clambered up the ladder and Nina followed a little too close behind, leaving the blinking explosives and Tom’s corpse.
“Agents Hammer and Archive!” she exclaimed with false enthusiasm. “What a pleasant surprise!”
Hammer hopped up from the couch. Archive stayed where he was. A bird's eye view of the God's Lost Children performance blared on the television.
“Agent Jim-Bean was just telling me…” Nina turned to look over her shoulder but Jim-Bean was gone. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to ask you some questions.”
Hammer sat down again and Ninja joined him on the couch. “Yes, you’re all quite mysterious for government agents. The Freedom of Information Act doesn’t have much on you.”
“That’s on purpose,” said Hammer. “What are you doing here anyway?”
“I could ask you the same question,” said Nina. “Or other questions – like, did you ever catch that serial killer, Agent Archive?”
Archive blinked. “What?”
“You know, Elijah Jackson?” When Archive didn’t respond, she continued. “I spoke to Ms. Dawson and she mentioned that she shot him six times…”
“David Charles killed him,” said Archive.
“Really,” said Nina, flipping through a notebook. “According to my notes you told Detective Gallagher that it was, and I quote, ‘a demon hopping from body to body’.”
“Then you also know that Gallagher threw me out of the police station when I shared that theory,” said Archive.
Nina changed tactics. She turned to Hammer. “Your grandmother’s very nice.”
Hammer’s expression went from guarded amusement to icy rage. “You spoke with my grandmother?”
“I took her out to lunch. She’s really a classy lady. She speaks very highly of you.”
Hammer stood up. “Stay away from her.”
“Oh I will,” said Nina with a smirk. “We’ve already chatted quite a bit. GNN has a lot more resources than you might think, Mr. Grange.”
“This interview is over,” snarled Hammer. Archive got up and followed him out of the Green Room.
Nina made a circle with her thumb and forefinger. “Be seeing you.”
They stepped out into the hallway. Satan’s Sadist guards were everywhere, glowering at them or drinking in one of the dressing rooms.
“We’ve got to find Jim-Bean,” said Hammer. “I don’t know what he’s up to but—“
There was an odd sound from the crowd on the many monitors that dotted the hallway outside the Green Room. Smoke steamed out of the front of the stage.
“I think I know,” said Archive.
The strange sound was people in the crowd choking. Tear gas sent them scrambling away from the stage. People in the crowd further back didn’t seem to notice; it was hard to distinguish a biological attack from the frenzy of death metal fans. For all they knew, it was part of the act.
“He’s clearing the auditorium,” said Hammer. “That means…DOWN!”
Hammer and Archive hit the floor as an explosion rocked the stage. The television registered flashes of light, screams, and an impenetrable wall of dirt and debris kicked up by the explosion.
“Okay, everybody out!” shouted a burly-looking biker.
Nina Juarez was strong-armed out by a weasely-looking thug, who shoved her roughly out of the Green Room. Then they came for Archive and Hammer.
Archive put up both hands and whispered something. Smoke billowed up around them, filling the hallway.
“Fire!” shouted one of the bikers.
The security detail, holding onto its morale by a thread, broke at the news of the fire spreading from the stage. Of course, there was no fire, only Archive’s invocations.
Hammer ducked out of sight and ran towards the Lighting & Sound room door. It was locked.
Hammer pounded on it. “Jimmy, open it!”
A second later Jim-Bean unlocked the door. “How did you know I was in here?”
“Because it’s where I would have gone. Did you just kill everyone in the theater?”
Jim-Bean frowned. “No, that’s why I released the tear gas first.” On the monitors, the stage was a burning conflagration. Some of the crowd in the far back was still cheering, unaware that the entire band had been massacred.
“You just murdered three people in cold blood.”
“Four. And they were about to finish the chant,” said Jim-Bean. “And consecrate the mounds…”
“We don’t even know what Lochnar's ritual does! You caused a panic—people are going to hurt, even die, as a result of your actions.”
Jim-Bean shushed him. “Hear that?”
The cameras were still rolling. The screen showed movement in the burning remains of the stage. Rising out of the wreckage, Brianne Lochnar stepped out of the debris, unharmed.
“Son of a bitch!” swore Hammer.
“I KNEW she was a sorcerer!” shouted Jim-Bean.
Brianne pulled forth from the wreckage a broken guitar. A severed wire trailed from it like a broken tail. She began to strum a chord…
“What’s she doing?” asked Hammer.
Brianne sang. Despite having a broken guitar, despite no working sound equipment, despite the death of her two band mates, the audio came through loud and clear, complete with guitar riff. The crowd stopped its panicked escape and turned as one to listen.
“Violet flows from the wound in your chest Black is the hole in which you rest”
Hammer and Jim-Bean screamed, clutching their ears. The sound pierced their skulls.
“The song!” shouted Jim-Bean, trying to focus through the pain. “Play it…backwards!”
“Your heart of gold was ripped in two Soaked in the sickness that is you.”
Hammer nodded and hooked up his cistron to the sound system, wincing as his headache pounded in time with the music.
“Grey is the box that holds my head Yellow's the wind when everyone's dead”
The reverse song they had used against Billy in the Best Buy shrieked over what was left of the intercom and sound system. Brianne staggered from the audio counterassault. She strummed imaginary strings harder, and the guitar riff became a breathtaking wail.
“Red is the blood dried on the rope While green is your last hope.”
Jim-Bean flipped the gains on all of the audio equipment to the maximum.
On the monitors, Brianne’s flesh began to sizzle and pop.
“Color me green!” she shouted, her head swelling, one eye larger than the other. Her warped lips blurted out “Green is the color of my god!” and then she burst like a popped balloon.
The crowd cheered, screaming into hysterics. What they took to be an assault had transformed into the best damn pyrotechnics rock show the world had ever seen.
Hammer, Archive, and Jim-Bean were already in their rental car, far away from the chaos that was Hughes Auditorium. For once, Archive was driving.
“This is Hammer, call in a STREETSWEEPER team at my coordinates…”
Jim-Bean tapped him on the shoulder. “Look.” He held up his cistron.
“This is Nina Juarez and I’m live at Hughes Auditorium in Jacksonville, Georgia. God’s Lost Children has played their last song. It appears that Brianne Lochnar, in an attempt to one-up herself from the previous violent concerts, rigged the stage with tear gas to incite the crowd to riot. As you can see behind me, the stage caught fire. There are unconfirmed reports of Brianne playing right up until the stage collapsed, but we’ll have to get a look at the tapes…”
Jim-Bean grinned and tapped a compact disc on the dash of the car.
Hammer turned back to his cistron. “Belay that order. STREETSWEEPER canceled. Repeat, STREETSWEEPER canceled.” He frowned over at Jim-Bean. “We got lucky.”
Jim-Bean shrugged. “I make my own luck. Where to next?”
“Star mentioned those mounds. I want to find out what really happened there.”
Archive threw the car in gear. “Creepy mounds it is!”
“And now,” mumbled the DJ on the radio, “in honor of the recent debacle at the Hughes Auditorium, we play a hidden track by God’s Lost Children. It’s on the end of Six Gun Gorgon Dynamo. And here it is:”
“Nor do I particularly care.
Nor do I particularly care.
I don't know a thing about it,
Nobody told me all about it
Nor do I particularly care.
Nor do I particularly care.
Nor do I particularly care.
Didn't read about it,
Didn't see it on the news.
Nor do I particularly care.”
This story hour is a combination of “Future/Perfect” Part Two by Dennis Detwiller and “Where A God Shall Tread” from At Your Door. You can read more about Delta Green at Delta Green. Please note: This story hour contains spoilers!
Kurtis "Hammer" Grange (Fast Hero/Gunslinger) played by George Webster
Joseph “Archive” Fontaine (Dedicated Hero/Acolyte) played by Joe Lalumia
Jim “Jim-Bean” Baxter (Charismatic Hero) played by Jeremy Ortiz (Jeremy Robert Ortiz)
I enjoy the Future Perfect series by Dennis Detwiller, especially because he released them for free under the patronage project. I already had a mysterious mound leftover from The Evil Stars, so this gave me an opportunity to explore the Georgia Guidestones in Elberton further. These Guidestones are real and the circumstances surrounding their creation just as mysterious.
What Future Perfect lacks is a way to interact with the shapeshifting serial killer on the loose. Fortunately, Where a God Shall Tread has a similar villain committing murders (in the most idiotic fashion). The modus operandi of killing victims and gnawing their bones clean makes more sense here and provides a narrative to hang the plot off of; otherwise, the agents wander around town waiting for the serial killer they don’t know about to show up.
Of course, the scenario hints that, when push comes to shove, the bad guy decides to wake up his brethren and go on the offensive against the one place most fortified against them. This provided a suitably creepy and tragic finale.
Defining Moment: Hammer, on the phone with the sergeant, discovers an impostor standing in front of him.
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0933635648?ie=UTF8&tag=michaeltresca&linkCode=as2& camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0933635648]At Your Door[/ame]: Source of Where a God Shall Tread scenario.
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001037WSE?ie=UTF8&tag=michaeltresca&linkCode=as2& camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001037WSE]Let Sleeping Gods Lie[/ame]: By Darkest Hillside of the Thickets.
Like the girl that we met at the serpent mound
Like the thing that we saw in the ultrasound
Like the path through the woods that the natives shun
Like the hair on the mole of the chosen one
--The Chosen One by Darkest of the Hillside Thickets
Elberton was a sleepy little town in Elbert County, Georgia. It was home to Southeastern Power – the major employer in the town, and several smaller manufacturing plants. The economic dips that came and went since the Great Depression had somehow passed Elberton by, and people liked it that way.
The 5,000 people who called Elberton home loved it; its small town flavor had not been marred by the modern bustle of city life. Life went on there much in the same way as it had for the last seven decades. It was also home to the Georgia Guidestones.
The Georgia Guidestones were a huge granite monument in Elbert County, Georgia. The Guidestones draws tourists, and adds a lot of local flavor. The Georgia Guidestones were located on a hilltop in Elbert County, Georgia, approximately 9 miles north of the center of Elberton. Located at the highest point in Elbert County, the mound, as it was called, had its own history.
But that’s not all Elberton laid claim to. Over the decades it produced some exceptional people in the shadow of that mound. Over the decades it’s produced some exceptional people in the shadow of that mound. It’s most famous son, Arthur Hunt, the town drunk turned eccentric genius, who forged an empire on consumer electronics was born there, and a statue dedicated to him sat in the middle of town.
Jim-Bean looked up at the statue. “Doesn’t look like much.”
Hunt’s statue was a twelve-foot bronze edifice on top of a hollow cement pylon in the center of town. It sat at the heart of the Malcolm Elberton Park, and faced west.
“He’s smiling about something,” said Hammer.
The Hunt statue had its hand outstretched. With an uncharacteristic smile on its face, Hunt’s eyes pointed towards…
Archive spun about, took a few steps, looked at the sun, then down at his cistron. “Yep, he’s pointing towards the mound.”
“The one Star saw Lochnar and friends sacrifice kittens on,” said Hammer. "Let's go."
The route headed west, then turned north on Highway 77, towards Elbert County. Small signs beside the highway indicated the turnoff for the Guidestones, which was identified by a street sign as "Guidestones Rd."
The dirt road bounced through bend after bend of cool brush lands. A recent rainfall made the going slippery.
As the car rounded another thicket, a locked wooden gate blocked the road. A wooden house was nearby. No one was visible inside, though smoke rose from the chimney of the small wooden house. There was swamp about a hundred yards to the left and right of the house, flanked by palmetto and even prickly-pear cactus on sandy hummocks. The road continued beyond the gate, disappearing into trees several hundred yards beyond. A sign read “Double 7 Farms.”
A black man in overalls came out of the house and waved at the car. “Hello!” he called. “What you fellas want?”
"You the owner of this farm?" asked Hammer.
"I am," said the older man. "Name's Wayne. Wayne Mullenix. And you are?"
"Agent Hammer," he flashed his badge. "We're here to visit the Georgia Guidestones."
"'Course, 'course!" He wiped his forehead with his hat. "One day some lawyers appeared and offered me $1,500 for five acres of ground,” said Wayne. “They said that someone wanted to put up a marker commemorating his great-grandfather, who died hereabouts more than a hundred years ago. So I said: How big? And the answer: Pretty big, only you can plow around it. Well that sounded fine to me, so I worked ‘em up to $5,000. Yep, $5,000 dollars! Cash money!” Wayne nearly jumped for joy. “Only now that I see the bunch what came out to do the deed, I think there’s something funny about the deal.”
"How so?" asked Hammer.
"Oh, you know. Kids partying at the mounds. And then there's the crazies trying to dig up the mound…"
"Who?" asked Hammer.
"Well there's Arthur Hunt, but I reckon you know him well enough already. Then there's Doug Yale, the Georgia River Killer. Folk don't like to talk about him much around here. Back in '99 Yale was caught vandalizing the Guidestones. Still there, I think. Yale went from vandalizing to eatin' people, leavin' nuttin' but bones. Sheriff Falstaff finally caught him, then they both disappeared from custody back in 2000. Yale was part of that crazy cult…"
Jim-Bean rubbed his forehead. "A cult?"
"Yeah. Yale was part of them New Star Crusade folks. Tried to keep them off the property. Took it all the way to the state, but that Ignis fella spent nearly three million on legal fees. Went right up to the Georgia Court of Appeals. And wouldn't ya know it, the state sided with him on some hogwash about freedom of religion! They still worship here on the solstice, which is tonight. I reckon the fact that you boys are here changes things, eh?"
Hammer frowned. "About that. We'd like to keep our presence quiet for the moment, due to the…issues you mentioned."
Wayne's benevolent expression turned serious. "Oh, I gotcha. Sure, sure. Well, lookit me blabberin' on when you folks got important business. Let me open the gate for ya."
Five massive slabs of polished granite rose out of the earth in a star pattern. The rocks were each sixteen feet tall, with four of them weighing more than twenty tons apiece. Together they supported a 25,000-pound capstone. Approaching the edifice, it was hard not to think immediately of England's Stonehenge or possibly the ominous monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The only clues to its origin were on a nearby plaque on the ground—which gave the dimensions and explained a series of intricate notches and holes that corresponded to the movements of the sun and stars—and the "guides" themselves, directives carved into the rocks. These instructions appeared in eight languages ranging from English to Swahili and reflected a peculiar New Age ideology. Two stood out in particular, "maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature" and "be not a cancer on the earth—leave room for nature."
The stones had been splattered with polyurethane and spray-painted with graffiti. Yale's handiwork included slogans like "Death to the new world order."
"So?" asked Hammer.
"So…what?" Jim-Bean asked back.
"The mound. Can you sense anything?"
"Oh, right." Jim-Bean concentrated. With a gasp, he fell to his knees.
Linear Mode
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