The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Devouring Storm, Part 2 of 6

The strange and tragic circumstances that have brought Mickey Malloy to Kansas are just the latest in a long line of deaths and horror that stretches back nearly thirty years. A long time ago, on another battlefield, brave men and women confront the utterly strange.

Until Only Roaches Remain is available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

This is Part 2 of The Case of the Devouring Storm. To avoid spoilers, check out Part 1 first.

Content warnings: Mild swearing, alcohol use, death, violence, gun violence, animal violence, gore, Nazis.

MONDAY AFTERNOON, MAY 3, 1943
IOWAY TRIBAL POST OFFICE
WHITE CLOUD, KANSAS

“Didn't think he'd ever leave,” Mick said. He took another slug from his flask while he watched the postmaster out the window. The man was still cursing and making obscene gestures at the people who'd evicted him from his own office.

“He does not enjoy having white men tell him where to go,” Lewison said.

“He had some choice words for you, too,” Mick replied. What was that last thing he said? He seemed damn certain about that one.”

“Yeah, ‘máñikathi,’ it means ‘coyote,’” the agent said softly. “A scavenger, bottom feeder, liar.”

Mick could tell the postmaster had hit the younger man's soft spot so he let that be. He looked around for some kind of distraction, but the place was sparse. Artyom and the professor were busy fiddling with their gear and would not appreciate any interruption, so Mick and Lewison were stuck together.

“This been your jurisdiction for a while?” Mick asked, changing the subject for the younger man's sake.

“They call me in on investigations all over Kansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska, but this is where I live eight months a year,” he answered. “Grew up here, but once I got back from Wichita State they started treating me different.”

“Some folks don't take kindly to a book-taught man, and even fewer of 'em like a government man.”

“Especially here. My people hold long grudges.” Lewison stared after the still-shouting postmaster until the man was around the corner. He sighed, then watched the eggheads work.

Mick studied the two academics for a moment. They'd taken the gas bomb from the farm in a sealed metal crate but hadn't touched it since. Instead they pored through the samples they'd collected at the site. They had test tubes spinning in some kind of appliance and some others boiling the yellow slime from the shell down to dust to look at under a microscope. All the while they babbled away, bouncing between English, Latin, Russian, Norwegian, and scientific hokum.

“What are they doing?” Lewison whispered.

“Couldn't tell you, kid,” Mick said. He sat down on a wooden bench and watched the hypnotic rhythm of the two men working their sciences on what had been a mail sorting table just that morning. “So this is the only place you could commandeer?”

“You all insisted that electricity would be necessary. And if we had taken the school we would have had to give fourteen students and two teachers the boot instead of one cranky postman.” He held out a hand and presented the small town to me through the window. “You're in half of White Cloud's public buildings with power right now. We would not be welcome in anyone's home.”

“We are very sorry for that, Agent Lewison,” Evenstad piped up from behind a bubbling vial. “We will try to keep the smell to a minimum.”

“I don't think it's the stink, doc,” Mickey grunted. “Though I'm sure pa and squaw homeowner wouldn't appreciate that, either.”

“What's that, inspector?” the little professor asked, having already drifted back into his work.

“Don't sweat it,” Mick said, but Evenstad didn't hear. He was back in his world of chemicals and beakers once again.

“Why does he keep calling you ‘inspector?’” Lewison asked.

“I don’t know, maybe his English ain’t so good,” Mick deflected. Evenstad kept letting that gem slip, inching ever closer to blowing his cover. For as much shit as Hoover gave the Office about posing as feds, officials were terrible at it.

“His English is better than yours,” Lewison muttered. The pair of them watched the vials spin and bubble, mesmerized for a moment.

“Who runs planes around here, kid?” Mickey asked. “Somebody dropped that shell, and anything larger than a crop-duster would have to come further than could be easily kept a secret.”

“There are some a few for-hire crop-dusters outside the reservation, but none inside.”

“We're on the eastern edge of Indian country right now, aren't we?” Lewison nodded, and Mick continued: “I say we talk to your closest neighbor with some wings then work our way out.”

“Sounds solid,” Lewison said.

“Doc, you going to be fine here for a couple hours?” Mick asked. Evenstad looked up at Mick over the rims of his thick glasses, then beckoned the big man over with a motion of his spindly hand.

“I want to be certain before I infer any concrete conclusions, but if my presumptions are correct you may not be prepared for what you find,” the doctor said. His wavering Scandinavian voice had taken on a grave tone. He pushed up his glasses and put a hand out to his graduate student. “Artyom, a bottle of emetic, please.”

Artyom nodded and rifled through a large medicine bag until he'd recovered a small covered brown bottle. He handed it to his professor, nearly concealing a smirk when the old man handed it to Mickey.

“Syrup derived from carapechia ipecachuana,” he said as he presented the small bottle. “The foe whom I suspect to be at work is known for entomological trickery. Swallow one tablespoon of this tincture if any thing should pass your lips.”

“If anything should pass our... Is someone going to try to poison us?” Mick asked.

“Not directly, presumably. You would have nothing to fear if you drink the syrup.” Evenstad nodded, then slipped his glasses back down to the tip of his nose so he could study something on the other end his microscope.

“Hell, I'm not on this case just to get poisoned. I'll drink some right now, just in case,” Lewison muttered, then took the bottle out of Mickey's hand and unscrewed the cap.

“No!” Evenstad and Artyom shouted together. Lewison pulled the bottle back from his mouth so hard that it splashed over the rim. Mickey danced away from the falling liquid like it was molten lead and watched the drop hit the wooden floor between them. They looked down at it then back up at each other, Mick's glare accusatory while Lewison's was confounded.

“Only drink it if you must, otherwise it will make you very ill,” the doctor explained. “And never drink it indoors.”

“What is this brew, doc?” Mick asked.

“Unfortunately, young man, it is necessary.” The wizened old man nodded to the two investigators, indicating he was done with them before spouting off a line of science-babble that the two lay-persons in the room couldn't hope to decipher without a stack of textbooks.

“Guess that's our cue, Jim,” Mick said. He took the emetic bottle from Lewison.

The two men left the post office together and headed to the doctor's car. While they walked, Mick was extremely careful to store the bottle in the opposite pocket from the one he stashed his flask in.

MONDAY NIGHT, JUNE 5, 1916
PORT OF ZEEBRUGGE, BRUGES
FLANDERS, KINGDOM OF BELGIUM

Captain Elijah Kelly stared down the dank hole in the middle of the abandoned warehouse’s concrete floor. The light from his headlamp did nothing to dispel the darkness.

A man’s scream echoed up, chilling him to the marrow.

“That is suffering,” Andrew Portnoy said, his voice low and jagged, as if he hadn’t spoken in weeks. The commando leaned over the void and stared into the abyss. The tank strapped to his back looked heavy enough to send him tumbling down. His bushy mustache twitched, the only movement on his dour face.

“Guess we’re in the right place,” Kelly muttered, stroking his black beard. Portnoy snorted.

“If there is suffering, we are,” Portnoy said. Kelly rolled his eyes. Portnoy was always saying some off-color nonsense, but he was good to have in a scrap.

“The man is not yet dead, there is still time,” the third member of their party reminded them. Baroness Héloïse Bellegarde-Halistone stood broad and strong, her demeanor as steel-gray as her hair. She buckled her own helmet under her chin and flipped the switch on its battery pack to awaken its little bulb.

“Then we’ll go get him,” Kelly said. “You two ready?”

“Is anyone else joining our journey below?” Portnoy asked.

“My husband and my brother are in Bordeaux, my son is with Douglas in London, Miller and Goodwin are in the hangar. You are the only two left.”

Portnoy and Kelly looked at one another. They had accompanied the baroness behind enemy lines into Belgium to act as bodyguards. Neither of them had counted on storming ancient sewers to chase screams.

“Then I guess it’s time we went in,” Kelly said. He pulled the revolver out of his waistband, saying: “I got mine.”

“I am never unarmed,” Portnoy replied. He already had a spiked trench knife in one hand and a broom-handle Mauser in the other.

“I will take the point,” the baroness said. She unsheathed her fencing saber and unbuckled her pistol holster. Its blade gleamed as brightly as the diamond on her finger. Before either man could object, she gathered up her blue dress and dropped down the hole.

Kelly and Portnoy splashed down behind her. Stale seawater had gathered in the hole, which opened up into a tunnel running east under the city. It was tall enough for even Kelly walk upright.

“Who dug this?” he wondered. His lamp revealed the walls to be smooth. He ran his fingers along their surface, finding no tool marks. Even foundations and pipes that the tunnel intersected were cut through without interruption.

“This is no tunnel,” the baroness said, “It is a burrow.”

The man screamed again. It careened past, miles distant and an inch away all at once.

“It would take a lunker to dig this out,” Kelly said once the echoes had faded.

“I am ready,” Portnoy grunted. He holstered his pistol and sheathed his knife, then unhooked a long black tube from the enormous canister on his back. The jacketed hose that connected the tube to the tank swayed with his movements.

“Perhaps you should lead the way, sergeant,” the baroness suggested. She was not eager to have the strange man walking behind her with a Schilt flammenwerfer.

Portnoy slid between his companions and let the flickering light from his flamethrower guide him. They trudged onward, deeper beneath the city.

Kelly watched the floor. He counted the bootprints of at least a dozen people, all walking as if burdened. The salt water trickle continued, wiping out the trail here and there, but leaving enough evidence for him to recognize drag marks from heels and toes. The men who’d gone before them had brought unwilling guests.

The tunnel branched a quarter-mile in. Portnoy entered the side chamber first, a round space with a stinking, waist-high mound in the center.

“A shirt,” Portnoy said. He picked up a shredded button-up from the top of the pile. The brown of old blood stained its front. He tossed it aside and went back to the main passage. Kelly walked his light across the clothes. Every garment had been torn to pieces and soaked in blood.

“This is enough for…” he started, hardly wanting to contemplate the number of people who had died in those tunnels.

“Dozens,” the baroness said. She looked away, steeling herself. “There are still living people here. This can be the end of it.”

Kelly followed her and they let Portnoy lead them deeper. He had known about the Vampire Counts’ atrocities before he’d left England, but to see them collected and left to fester was something else entirely.

After another quarter-mile, the tunnel walls began to sparkle. Kelly was afraid that the sea had breached the stone and touched it. He wasn't going to drown in darkness. The sparkles detached from the wall and began crawling up his fingers. He felt their tiny legs digging into his skin.

“Lord Almighty,” he hissed, flicking his hand to dislodge them. Once he was certain they were all off he leaned in closer to examine the wall. “Jesus, they're doodlebugs.”

“You must be prepared for anything, captain,” the baroness reminded him. He nodded. Her briefing about the Counts' esoteric weapons programs had stuck in his mind. These people could manipulate anything to their will, even bugs. As far as he knew, they were surrounded by a million glittering bombs, each smaller than a match head.

“Onward,” she ordered.

Portnoy stopped them with a gesture after another few minutes. They ducked low and cut off their headlamps. The tunnel split again, one direction slanting steeply away to the right and the other cutting to the left, where they could see light and hear voices.

“Germans,” Portnoy growled, so quietly that Kelly might have mistaken it for a creak in the stone. Portnoy listened for a moment then held up four fingers. They were outnumbered.

“We take them,” the baroness order. “Bullets, no flame.”

Portnoy muttered something to himself, but hung up his flammenwerfer projector nonetheless.

On the baroness' three-count, they surged forward.

The left tunnel opened to another circular room, this one much larger than the first, two dozens yards across or more. A pit opened up in its center, leaving a high platform that encircled the drop. Electric lamps blazed around its circumference. The Germans were on the far side of the pit, shirtless, pale, and slathered in amber goop.

Portnoy yelled orders at them, his voice booming against the stone. All four men raised their hands, their eyes wide with terror. They hadn't expected their little party to be interrupted.

One of the krauts babbled in panic at the intruders, quietly but urgently, waving at them to leave the chamber. Kelly couldn't speak a lick of German, but each word out of kraut's mouth carried a little more hysteria than the last.

Portnoy stood and tall and let his voice boom across the pit, cowing all four men. The krauts pressed themselves against the stone wall, frozen in terror.

“They said not to wake them,” he explained to Kelly and the baroness.

“They're already awake,” Kelly replied.

“They were not talking about themselves,” the baroness clarified. She kept her pistol leveled at the knot of Germans, but eased forward to the lip of the pit.

“Mon Dieu,” she whispered. Kelly inched forward, not letting his eyes, or gun, drift from the krauts. The pit dropped about ten feet deep to a still pool of stale salt water. Three round shells floated in the middle, motionless. He didn't know what he was seeing.

“Are they turtles?” he wondered.

“No,” the baroness answered.

Portnoy shouted a question at the krauts and they whimpered a response.

“He says they are sea scorpions.”

“I have never heard of this,” the baroness replied. The three shells were round and segmented, light green striped over dark.

Portnoy shouted again, this time saying a word Kelly did know: Nordholm, a name they'd connected to the Counts' illicit weapons funding. No one had any idea what they'd find chasing down an entomologist on the payroll of would-be wold conquerers, but being connected to the Counts made the inquiry worthwhile.

The kraut stammered their response.

“The doctor has not been here in months, they say,” Portnoy translated. The kraut babbled on, his words tumbling out like an avalanche. Once he'd started, he had to tell the whole story. Tears began rolling down his cheeks. Portnoy listened, his finger never leaving his revolver's trigger. When the shirtless kraut finished, he said: “He claims Nordholm brought the sea scorpions here from Norway, from an underwater cave. He tried to make them into weapons, like the others, but they would not breed or respond to command. He left them here, and left these men to care for them and his other projects. They have not heard from him in months.”

“Who did the clothes belong to?” the baroness asked. Once Portnoy translated, the krauts looked at one another, as if getting their story straight. He shouted the question again, abruptly ending their silent conference. The talkative one answered.

“Vagrants, the rest of their team, people who grew curious about their dealings,” Portnoy said for him. “They did not want the sea scorpions to grow hungry.”

“Jesus,” Kelly gasped, his vision grew hazy for a second. Dozens of people for three motionless lumps in the water, settled like old turds. “The doctor left months ago! Why stay?”

Portnoy repeated the question. The krauts all snapped straight. Their narrow, ribbed chests all bore the same mark branded over their hearts: the barbed Z. Their spokesman answered, defiantly.

“The Father asked them to,” Portnoy grunted. He snarled another question. The krauts clammed up. Portnoy repeated himself. The first smirked, then whispered something. The cavern carried it across the pit and the pool.

“He says that the Father can be found in the other chamber,” Portnoy said.

“Bullshit,” Kelly snarled.

“We have found hide nor hair of the Counts’ leader in months, Captain Kelly,” the baroness replied. “These men are clearly his followers. We cannot afford to pass up any leads.”

“I will see,” Portnoy said.

“No, keep that flamethrower on those guys, and on whatever those things are. I'll go,” Kelly declared. He pointed his pistol at the kraut with all the answers and gave him the international 'move your ass' gesture. “You, motormouth, with me. No funny business.”

The kraut broke off from his comrades and circled around the pit, giving it and the stationary shells within as wide a berth as he could. Once he was within arm's reach, Kelly grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him toward the single exit. The goop hed been spreading on himself stuck to Kelly's hand.

“What is this?” he asked. It stank like rotten potatoes. The man gave him an answer, but he couldn't understand anyway. Kelly poked his pistol into his host's back and gave him another shove.

“I'll be right back,” he told Portnoy and the baroness.

“It is a trap,” Portnoy said.

“Of course it is,” Kelly replied. “But we need every scrap of evidence we can get.”

“Be careful,” the baroness said.

Kelly followed the ambling kraut across the main tunnel to the passage to the right. It cut down steeply, but Kelly's flashlight revealed crude steps carved into the smooth floor.

“Go ahead,” he told the kraut. The descended slowly, saltwater from above trickling past their heels. They walked for another few minutes until the stairs dropped away into bottomless black water.

“Das ist die Dichtung,” the kraut insisted. Under the glare of Kelly's flashlight, his face looked horrifically sunken, the spaces between his ribs wide enough to fit a finger through.

“What's that?” Kelly asked.

“Die Dichtung,” the kraut repeated. He gestured to indicate an objecting moving beneath something then coming back up, then pointed at the water. He wanted Kelly to dive underneath and come up on the other side.

“Yeah, right. You first, pal,” Kelly said, chuckling. As far as traps went, he'd seen better.

To his surprise, the kraut dove in. Kelly watched the water churn, then calm.

“Oh, hell,” he said to himself. He set his flashlight aside, took off his boots, and jumped in after him. The cold water shocked him, but he took a deep breath and dove into the blackness.

The tunnel was narrow, but straight. He felt his way beneath the dipping ceiling. It could only have been fifteen or twenty feet before the tunnel rose again. His head popped out in seconds. His first gasping breath nailed him with the smell of rancid blood.

“What the Hell?” he gasped. He was in a much smaller chamber than the one holding the sea scorpions, again lit with electric lamps. He found the stairs with his feet and lurched out of the frigid water. He swung his pistol around until he spotted the kraut, standing over a splayed body.

“Hey!” Kelly shouted, his voice crashing through the small room but elicited no response from the kraut. He approached slowly, finger on the trigger. “What is this, who is that?”

The man on the floor was shirtless, pale, and boney, with a barbed Z branded onto his chest. He didn't appear to be wounded. His chest rose and fell, slower than it should.

“Is that the Father?” Kelly asked. They'd been hunting Zsiga Zentai for months. The Austrian hermit-philosopher's name had come up during every investigation of the Vampire Counts. Kelly examined the supine man's face. No, this man was too young, too thin. Even starved and unconscious, Zentai would have been hard to misidentify.

“Who is this?” Kelly asked. Did the kraut bring him there to help the guy? If the man was dead, it hadn't been for long: he still had color in his face, elasticity to his skin. Kelly crouched and felt for a heartbeat. The man was hot to the touch, fever hot, but his pulse was so faint that Kelly could hardly find it. It was more of an undulation than a beat.

“If we don't do something, he's going to die,” Kelly said. He stood up to look the kraut in the eye.

“Er ist mein Freund,” the kraut answered. “Und der Vater lebt in ihm.”

“Yeah, great, whatever that means,” Kelly muttered. Icy seawater dripped out of his beard onto the man's face. He gauged no reaction.

The kraut squatted next to the body. He lifted his own wrist to his mouth, then bit down so hard the Kelly heard his skin snap. Blood flowed from his veins and over his chin. Kelly stumbled backed in shock.

“What are you doing?” he stammered.

The kraut didn't answer. He put his bleeding wrist to the corpse's mouth, letting red ooze between his lips. Within a second, the body spasmed, bucking like someone had grabbed him by the ankles and was shaking him out.

“What is this?” Kelly demanded. His eyes darted to the area around the corpse. The gray stone was stained brown around him: old blood. It had splashed outward from that spot before. The walls and ceiling were stained. Whatever was happening had happened before, and with such force that gore had rained over the whole chamber.

The kraut closed the distance. Kelly fired twice, but the kraut kept coming and tackled him to the floor.

“Beobachte ihn,” he hissed in Kelly's ear. The body was flopping like a fish, kicking his legs out, slamming his arms.

Kelly squirmed in the kraut's grip, getting enough space that he could jam his thumb into one of the hole's he'd drilled in the man's chest. The kraut screamed and let go.

“I ain't staying for this,” he said. He heard bones breaking within the body. He clocked the kraut across the jaw and jumped into the water, swimming down and away as fast as he could.

Whatever happened next, the kraut screamed so loud that it carried beneath to surface.

Kelly thrashed his way up on the other side of the tunnel, snatched up his boots and light, and dashed up the steep stairs as fast as he could. Orange light flickered at the top of the tunnel.

He got to the entrance of the pool room just as the baroness stumbled out. Her saber was red with blood.

“Captain, it is time we make our exit,” she said. Flames roared in the chamber behind her.

“What happened?” he asked.

“They attempted to overpower us,” she replied. “I dispatched them easily enough, but one threw himself into the pool.”

A quaking hiss shuddered behind her, and Portnoy came thundering out.

“Out of the way!” he yelled. Something heavy scraped stone behind him.

One of the things dragged itself out of the burning water. The shell that Kelly had seen on the surface was just the top of its head. Claws to tail it was the size of a wagon and looked like a scorpion had mixed it up with a spool of barbed wire and an armadillo. The thing reared back, half-charred already, flailing a dozen barbed legs and gnashing mandibles as long as Kelly’s forearm.

Portnoy shoved Kelly and the baroness back, then spun and leveled his flammenwerfer. A blazing gout erupted from its nozzle, dousing the man-eating thing. It hissed and drew back. Its carapace popped and cracked, but still it charged.

Portnoy unleashed Hell again, and Kelly and the baroness unloaded their pistols. The thing steamed and shuddered, eventually going still, crackling on the floor as flames consumed it. Black smoke billowed out of the chamber. Kelly pulled his wet shirt over his nose and mouth and ducked low.

“We can't stay!” he shouted.

Kelly led them up and out. The smoke rose past them. When they hauled themselves out onto the warehouse floor, it looked like they were climbing out of a chimney.

They spent a few minutes coughing before anyone could speak.

“What did he show you down there, captain?” the baroness eventually asked.

Kelly considered that for a moment. For the entire time he'd been working with the Halistones' outfit, every single person he trusted had told him that 'vampire' was just a word for unsettling folks. But after what he'd seen...

“You know,” he said, laying on his back and watching the smoke collect in the rafters, “I don't rightly know, and that scares the Hell out of me.”

Like what you read? Buy me a beer or @ me about it.

Copyright © 2024 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Bruce Connors.