The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Devouring Storm, Part 4 of 6

Mickey Malloy has reached his limit and chewed his way past it. Now he must figure out exactly what he is dealing with, because what he’s seen so far has been awful.

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

This is Part 4 of The Case of the Devouring Storm. To avoid spoilers, check out Parts 1, 2, and 3 first.

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

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

“Agent Malloy! You have brought the final piece of the puzzle!” Doctor Evenstad shouted with glee. Mickey had just burst into the post office lay into the old man but Evenstad had cut him off and befuddled him all at once.

“You... I... did what?” Mick stammered.

“Quiet, do not move,” Evenstad ordered, instantly transforming from an eccentric loon to a disapproving professor. Mick froze in place. The little man creaked across the room, step by cane-assisted step. He tottered to within six inches of Mickey's lumpy face and reached toward him with his wrinkled fingers.

“What are you - ?” Mick tried to ask. Evenstad cut him off with an angry hiss.

The doctor reached into Mickey's mouth and plucked out something that had been lodged between his crooked teeth. Artyom rushed to his side, kneeling in silent reverence as Evenstad held it up to the light.

It was a still-kicking cockroach leg, black and bristly. Mick almost hurled again on the spot.

“Thank you, Agent Malloy, this is absolutely comprehensive.”

Evenstad and Artyom studied the leg in silence from every angle before Artyom finally produced a glass vial and sealed it away.

“Just what the hell is that, and how did you know they'd be there?” Mick asked.

“Eurycotis nordholmaria. The Nordholm carnivorous cockroach,” Evenstad answered. “You ingested the carapechia ipecachuana extract immediately, I presume?”

“It about turned my guts out, doc!” Mick said. “You could've warned us!”

“About the syrup or about the E. nordholmaria?” the doctor asked absently. He'd already turned and begun hobbling his way back to his work station.

“Both!” Mick protested.

“Would you have believed me if I told you that a hybrid strain of flying carnivorous cockroaches might evacuate a nest of dead flesh to enter your body orally?” Evenstad asked over his shoulder.

“Doc, we work for the same outfit,” Mick sighed. “I've seen some off-putting stuff. I'd have given you the benefit.”

“Indeed, agent. I apologize for not preparing you adequately. When next we encounter Doctor Nordholm's work, you will be forearmed with forewarning.”

“I appreciate that,” Mick said. He calmed down a bit, distracting himself by running his tongue across his teeth to make sure there wasn't any more lingering insect anatomy stuck between them. “So this Doctor Nordholm is who we're looking for?”

“Adrial Nordholm is the originator of the E. nordholmaria species,” Evenstad answered, then asked: “Did you secure any leads on where we might find him?”

“Dead end at the flying company,” Mick said, “But Lewison and I agree that the best place to find this character is here. He's meticulous. Didn't expect anyone to find that gas shell so quick. When, not if, when, he figures out where we took it, he'll be here in force.”

At that, Evenstad managed to tear himself away from his burners and beakers. His glasses slipped back down his porous nose.

“I concur. Doctor Nordholm is an obsessive planner. We must prepare. Where is Agent Lewison? We will need everyone.”

“He's off getting over it and calling the cavalry on the town phone,” Mick said. He pulled his revolver and dumped its spent shells on the floor, refilling the hungry snub nose with fresh .38 cartridges. “And when he's back, we need to be ready for anything. So tell me everything I need to know about Doctor Nordholm.”

Mickey spun his pistol's satiated cylinder and then slapped it shut. Evenstad sighed and sunk into a chair, shrinking into his own rounded shoulders.

“Once, Adrial Nordholm was the most promising graduate student enrolled in the Department of Entomology at the University of Oslo,” he started, only to be interrupted by the crash of breaking glass. Artyom had dropped a beaker. “Oh Artyom, this was fifty years ago. Please, clean that up and prepare disincentive systems three, six, seven, and twelve.”

Artyom swept up the broken glass and then went to work unpacking several crates. Evenstad watched for a moment, then resumed his story:

“Adrial was my first assistant, a brilliant man with an aptitude and love for the study of insects. After he was awarded his doctorate, he joined me as a professor. We worked together for many years, writing papers and living within the small world. But while we were there, the large world changed around us. And it began to change him.”

Mick patted his pockets, searching for a cigarette, then abruptly stopped. His pack had been in his coat pocket, and that had gone up in smoke. He grunted and leaned back against the wall.

“Adrial began to pursue avenues of study that I considered ill-advised and immoral. Instead of seeking to improve our way of life by studying the ways of the small world, he began seeking to correct the problems he saw in the large world by changing the small. His studies turned to twisting the little ones into things that would exist for reasons other than to continue the greater cycle of life.”

Evenstad held up the specimen jar and examined the cockroach leg inside it. It kicked again. Mick's stomach took a turn but he held it together.

“The first hybrid organism he crafted was this species of carnivorous cockroach. It has no place in nature. Its only function is to be born, eat larger organisms, breed inside their prey, and die. Their entire life cycle only lasts a few hours.”

Mick tried to interject with a couple questions, but Evenstad was in full-on lecture mode and answered him without being asked.

“There were already thousands of dead individuals at the scene you visited, of course. Any of them that survived your encounter will expire in a few hours, perhaps sooner. And you have no need to worry, inspector. The ipecac syrup you drank would have purged all the individuals and eggs from your body.”

“They laid eggs in me?” Mick asked. His mouth got hot again, but Evenstad ignored the question.

“Adrial began publishing his studies around 1910, and only one group on the continent was interested in supporting his work. A group of German investors preparing for war. Their goal was to develop alternative martial weapons.”

“The Seven Counts,” Mick growled. He had been there when the counts and all their insane weapons had gone down.

“Exactly, inspector. The Great War finally divided the two of us irreparably. I presided over the revocation of his tenure, at which point he disappeared from academia and began creating unnatural organisms in secret. I have spent the last quarter-century attempting to soften the impact of his perverse creations.”

The little professor watched Artyom work.

“It is my fault, you know. I was Adrial's mentor. I taught him that we could change the world.”

“It doesn't matter now how Nordholm went rotten, doc,” Mick said. “But how'd you know he'd be here?”

“A man carrying a Finnish passport issued in my name was granted asylum in America several months ago. I was caring for silkworms at Oak Ridge when the alert came through and I knew no one else would deign to use my name. Artyom and I stayed vigilant, waiting for Adrial to appear.”

“So why Kansas?”

“Adrial had been obsessed with the old stories. The report Agent Lewison filed was eerily familiar.”

“You mean the ra^édhe gibrú?” Mick asked, stumbling through the pronunciation.

“Yes. There are many stories like it. The eighth plague of Moses, included.”

“I ain’t caught up on my Bible, doc,” Mick said. He pulled out his flask and took a quick nip. The professor put out a wrinkled hand and Mickey passed him the booze.

“The Lord said: 'I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow. They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen. They will devour what little you have left, including every tree that is growing in your fields. They will fill your houses and those of all Egyptians, something neither your fathers nor your forefathers have ever seen from the day they settled in this land till now.' Or something of that nature.”

Evenstad pulled the flask back and took a long swig. Artyom glared at Mickey with disapproval.

“The incident at the Lamasso farm reminded me of his interests.” Evenstad took a second sip from the flask, this one a bit smaller, then smacked his lips. “What is this? It is no karsk, but it will do.”

“Cheap, brown, strong, claiming to be bourbon. It’s not good, but it'll take you down the same road as the top shelf sauce,” Mick said. He took the flask back, capped and pocketed it. “Now what exactly happened to the Lamassos?”

“I believe Doctor Nordholm has bred a controllable species of plague-swarming locusts,” Evenstad said.

“So he just drop a can full of the things and they eat whatever's close?”

“The canister we recovered is an aerosol dispersal device. It sprayed a synthetic pheromone to which the locusts would respond. Its scent drew them down upon that farm. They stripped all edible organic matter away. Flesh and blood and vegetation.”

“And how about the cooked people inside the house?”

“That is very interesting observation. It correlates quite surprisingly with new research being performed at the University of Tokyo with regard to Japanese honeybees.” Evenstad pushed up his glasses and prepared to start class, which Mickey didn't have time for.

“Four people died, doc. This is a murder, not a breakthrough. What happened?”

“Of course. I am sorry.”

Mick felt guilty. He’d ruffled the old man's feathers, though just for a moment. Evenstad gracefully composed himself and continued:

“Like the honeybees, these locusts swarmed the Lamasso house, using their combined body heat to raise the temperature within the home to the point that they induced hyperthermia in the people inside.”

“So what's stopping him from dropping one of his biblical plague bombs right in our laps, right here?”

“Natural locusts eat then lay their eggs in their wake, up to two-hundred-fifty eggs per square foot. I suspect Adrial engineered his to be sterile, as he does all his prototype species. He would have recovered his swarm, presumably using another, more biologically imperative pheromone dispersed from a mobile hive-type facility. Once collected, the prototype swarm was almost certainly terminated, though he would have retained a few specimens to freeze and clone.”

“Clone?” Mickey asked.

“To perfectly replicate biologically,” Evenstad explained. It sounded like Evenstad and Nordholm had a few ideas in common with Nikola Tesla. The professor continued: “The point is that his next generation should still be gestating.”

“So once he tweaks these things and they're killing the way he likes...” Mickey reached.

“He will be capable of creating and directing swarms billions strong,” Evenstad concluded.

“The krauts will be able to wipe out the heartland in weeks with that many bugs. They'll starve us out.” Mick's craggy voice had ground down to a gravely whisper. Neither man said anything else for a long while. Until Artyom spoke, the only sound was the creaking of the post office's pine frame settling and the insistent bubbling of chemicals in reducing vials.

“Doctor Evenstad, I have the disincentive systems ready,” Artyom chirped. “And I have substituted system two for system three, as the sun has gone down.”

He had carried an armful of seltzer water bottles over to where Mickey and the doctor were standing, placing them with the other objects he'd gotten together. The bottles joined a pair of wooden crates riddled with air holes and an ancient hand-cranked victrola. Mick looked at the crates warily. The crates squeaked back at him.

“Good work, Artyom,” the doctor said, ignoring the vocal crates. “Be ready by the door.”

Artyom made sure he had quick access to the main entrance of the post office so he could get there in a hurry with his tools if it came down to it.

“So Doctor Nordholm is a former colleague of yours who now makes weaponized bugs for the Nazis?”

“That is a very simplified explanation, but yes.”

“But he can't hit us with the locusts again?”

“I do not think he would be able to yet.”

“Then what does he have left?”

“Adrial formulates his plans in layers, both entomological and conventional,” Evenstad said. He pointed his short cane at approaching headlights outside the front window of their commandeered post office. “And he is generally punctual. Gentlemen, I hope you are ready.”

A large truck pulled up across the street from the little post office, big enough to block the entire White Cloud General Store. It was a delivery truck, with three roll-up doors that could open up on the sides for access to the cargo bay. The logo for some flavored soda water company blazed red across the doors, bright even in the country dark. Brakes squealed, pistons hissed, and the truck's grumbling engine stuttered to a stop. A bank of scalding arc lamps bolted to the cargo bay's roof flared to life, flooding the dusty street with sterile white light. The cabin doors squeaked open, and Mickey braced himself against the door frame.

Two men stepped out of the cabin, tough guys with wide shoulders and thick skulls. They each revealed a cut-down pump shotgun from within the folds of their baggy overcoats, just like Mickey knew they would, just like he would have. That move was a classic, and was always intimidating as hell. It made Mick wish he had his moonlighting kit. The little revolver in his armpit holster wasn't going to cut the mustard with this pair of heavies. Nobody ever looked at a stubby .38 and said they were calling it a day, especially when that person was a gorilla with a scatter gun and backup.

Mickey looked past them across the wide street. His gear was in the trunk of the car, which made it about as useful as it being on the other side of the moon.

The two goons took up places at the front and rear of the truck. Close enough together to cover each other, far enough that a lucky shooter couldn't tag them both at once. A couple of pros, and considering Nordholm's employers of late, definitely in possession of some paramilitary training.

“Is Doctor Evenstad there?” the man near the cab called out. Mickey put a crooked finger to his lips. The thug's Boston accent was obvious. Mick risked another peek. The big freckled goon with short-cut red hair shouted again: “Doctor Evenstad, I am Cabhán Walsh. Doctor Nordholm sends his regards. He hopes you've been practicing your game.”

“Your what?” Mickey hissed at the professor. Evenstad shook his head.

“It was an intellectual exercise I used to engage my advanced students,” he whispered. “One names a potentially invasive or destructive species, the other would consider avenues to counteract that organism's ability to harm its environment. Adrial has taken it more literally, as of late.”

The old man was not distressed at all. In Mick's experience, when a couple leg-breakers show up and want to play, one might get a bit put out. Instead, Evenstad cupped a knobby hand around his mouth and shouted his response to the waiting goons:

“I believe it was Adrial's turn last!”

“That's what he says too, doc!” Walsh hollered back.

“Very well!” Evenstad shouted. “Let us play!”

“What are you doing?” Mickey growled.

“Inspector, Adrial Nordholm is a cunning and dangerous opponent, and he has had time and resources to prepare. The only way we are going to find him is to follow the path he has laid out for us.”

“Get ready,” Walsh advised. He and his partner stepped into single-piece coveralls topped off with honest-to-God beekeeper hoods. All Mick could do was chuckle. Even with access to all the gear in his truck, a fight that called for that kind of get-up was one he'd be practically naked for.

“We are waiting!” Evenstad taunted. The old man had spunk, Mickey'd give him that.

Walsh pulled a flashcard out of his pocket and read off of it: “Doctor N.'s first challenge: Coquillettidia perturbans.”

He read the Latin slowly and phonetically. The other thug pulled up the rolling door on the truck's first cargo bay. A whining buzz hummed through the air, emanating from an undulating gray cloud that rushed out of the truck.

“Simple,” Evenstad called back.

“He said that this first one is to help brush the dust off, doc,” Walsh jeered.

“What are those?” Mick asked. The cloud of tiny bugs was approaching quickly.

“C. pertrubans is the common mosquito,” Evenstad explained. Mick couldn’t see them from across the street, so those suckers didn’t have anything on Florida skeeters. Evenstad spoke up so the men across the street could hear him: “I surmise that these are disease carriers.”

“Rift Valley fever,” Walsh confirmed. Mick’s blood ran cold.

“Artyom, employ disincentive system two.” Evenstad remained calm as the thick swarm of blood-suckers closed in. Artyom frantically shoved the two chirping crates out the front door. He pried off the tops, gave them a hard kick, and ducked back inside.

A cacophony of terrified squeaks erupted from the crates, followed by dozens of frenzied, leathery bats.

“Myotis lucifugus.” Evenstad told Mickey, as if it was an acceptable explanation for an Army-educated cop.

The shrieking bats vanished into the darkness, leaving the oncoming swarm of voracious mosquitoes to continue their hunt for fresh blood.

Mick eyed the wide-open door warily.

“Doc, what are we doing here?”

“Trust in science,” Evenstad murmured.

“I'd rather trust in some DDT,” Mick growled. The swarm closed in.

The first bat came out of nowhere. It dove into the pulsing heart of the swarm, piling squirming mosquitoes into its gaping mouth and crunching the bugs with its needle-sharp teeth. An instant later, the next hundred bats careened through in the ravenous cloud, decimating and dividing the exoskeletal horde.

In less than a minute, four hundred brown bats were scything through the mosquitoes, scattering the swarm with ultrasonic screeches and snapping up the isolated insects. It was over in a flurry of shredded wings and tiny splattered organs.

Satisfied, the bats fluttered into the night.

“Did you know that an adult Myotis lucifugus can ingest its own body weight in insects in a single night?” Evenstad asked, just loud enough for the men across the street to hear. The old man seemed very pleased with himself.

“They looked like they could eat a horse,” Mick said. “You know, metaphorical-like.”

“Perfect preparation, Artyom,” Evenstad said. His grad student beamed. The old doctor flashed his gap-toothed grin and then shouted to Nordholm's goons: “What challenge has he sent next?”

“Hypoctonus antimii,” Walsh called back, stammering through the pronunciation. The second goon rolled up the cargo bay door and stepped back. Scuttling brown shapes tumbled out of the truck. There were several dozen of them, scratching gray things the size of baseballs.

“Indian corpse crabs,” Artyom whispered.

“What?” Mick asked.

“Nothing to fear, Agent Malloy,” Evenstad assured him. “'Crab' is a misnomer. They are actually a breed of tailless whip scorpion.”

“A 'tailless scorpion' doesn't sound so bad.”

“It's not the tail that is dangerous in this species, it is the dorsal spurs. Some believe they developed the spines and accompanying paralytic neurotoxin to prevent Hindu archakas from removing them from the human carrion that they feed upon.”

“Para what?”

“Neurotoxin,” Artyom said. “Every muscle seizes seconds after exposure, followed by death from asphyxiation.”

When he spoke to his mentor, his tone changed to an eager chirp:

“Doctor, may I employ system six? The third track on the arachnid LP should work, I believe.”

“I concur, Artyom. Very good.”

“Thank you, doctor,” Artyom replied, beaming again.

Artyom set the victrola in the open door and pulled a wax record out of a paper sleeve. He set the needle down with a surgeon’s care and began cranking the handle.

“So what's this going to do?” Mick asked.

“Arachnids of this suborder communicate with a series of clicks,” the doctor explained. “In fact, you can hear them now. The individuals at the leading edge of the feeding group are drawing the others toward us.”

Mick listened carefully. The closest corpse crabs were snapping their flesh-shredding mandibles as they advanced upon the post office-turned-citadel. The ones in the back followed their call. They had the officials’ scent and did not seem to mind that were still pre-corpses.

Each of the miniature monsters carried itself on eight armored legs, dragging their spiny gray carapaces across the road. They studied their prospective prey with obsidian-black eyes, hungry and soulless, though Evenstad might disagree about that last point. The creatures sliced at the air with pairs of wicked, mantis-like talons. Where other scorpions had pincers, these had scalpels.

“I wish you weren't so dedicated to taking your sweet time, kid,” Mickey growled at the Russian.

“You're doing fine, Artyom,” Evenstad said, then gave Mickey a disapproving look over his thick glasses.

Artyom grinned at Mickey's chastisement then flipped the switch on the victrola. A series of alien clicks and snaps began issuing from the record player's brass horn. The two scientists watched and waited.

The closest corpse crabs froze, save for their whipping antennae. They waved their bladed forelimbs in the air as the victrola chattered. The second rank of crabs bumped into the first who lurched into a full retreat, crawling over their comrades to get away from the record player as fast as they could. The entire swarm scuttled back across the street, away from the noises. Walsh and his goon jumped onto the running boards of the truck, keeping their feet away from the poisonous tide.

“They are responding to a panic signal, one that indicates an approaching predator,” Evenstad explained. Mickey watched the corpse crabs scuttle away. They disappeared beneath the truck, crawling into shadows beneath the general store across the street. Evenstad spoke up before Mickey could voice his concern over the escaped crabs. “H. antimii hail from southeastern India. They will be unable to survive the average pre-dawn temperature for this latitude.”

“Oh, okay,” Mick said.

“And of course Artyom will set out several dozen traps, just in case,” Evenstad added.

“Oh, okay,” Artyom sighed.

The last of the corpse crabs dragged itself into the store's crawlspace, making it safe for the two goons to hop back down. Artyom pulled the needle off the record and carried the victrola back inside.

“The final challenge, doctor!” Walsh hollered.

“Proceed!” the little doctor shouted back.

The thug examined his flash card, grinned cruelly, and called out once more: “Velocitermes calakmul.”

Artyom audibly gasped.

“The Calakmul jaguar termite,” he whispered. “Blyat!”

“The what?” Mick asked. Get was getting tired of having no idea what was going on. Artyom looked at Mickey like he was a child before answering.

“The species was recently described in Stett Ent Zeit by Doctor Nordholm,” Artyom offered. “Beyond the fact that it is a larger species of cave termite from southern Mexico, he has published very little on the species.”

“He still publishes while he works for the krauts?”

“Of course, Inspector Malloy, we are entomologists, not barbarians,” Evenstad said.

Before Mickey could respond, the last rolling door slammed open. A trio of hisses issued from the open cargo bay, and both goons ran and jumped into the cab, locking the door behind them. Three armored creatures the size of attack dogs hopped out of the truck, landing heavily in the middle of the street.

“Holy hell,” Mick said. He pulled his revolver and aimed it at the approaching horrors.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT, OCTOBER 16, 1940
TEMPLE 1, CALAKMUL, PETÉN BASIN
CAMPECHE, MEXICO

//Translated from Norwegian.//

A full moon illuminated the towering pyramid, bathing each of its terraced faces in a milky glow. Its brightness stood out from the black jungle around it like an iceberg in the open ocean. The men surrounding its base stood silhouetted against it, showing off their razor-edged machetes and the strange profiles of their woven maiz husk masks. They kept their backs to the rite occurring high above them, ignoring the screams.

Try as he might, Adrial Nordholm could not block them out.

“What I would give to shut that damn animal up,” he hissed. His hearing was not what it used to be, and he feared that this might be his last expedition into the field. He had hunted his quarry through the deserts of Australia and delved into the forgotten primordial caves beneath Ertnøya, over the peaks of the Italian Alps during the dead of winter and across Burmese mangrove swamps that swallowed men whole. If Mexico was to be his last adventure, the pained shrieks marring his observations would spoil the whole of it.

“I cannot hear what they are saying with that thing howling.”

“Close your mouth,” Elf snapped, his knuckles bloodless where he gripped his rifle. This younger man, a German, stood just a few centimeters taller than Nordholm, but treated the wizened scientist like a child. Only ten years earlier they would have been the same height, but time had stooped Nordholm's back and their sojourn through the thick Mexican rain jungles had set his knees to swelling as large as apples. For all his bluster, the grim German was afraid of the small world despite his training and conditioning, and wore mosquito netting wrapped around his face like a Bedouin.

It would only take a walking stick to regain Nordholm's mobility, but the German's deep fear could not be conquered.

Nordhom watched the figures at the pyramid's distant peak from the clump of ferns he had taken refuge behind. Torch-bearing cultists lined either side of the steep staircase, not that they needed the illumination: the full moon was as bright as a spotlight. For the moment they stood motionless, but when it was the next victim's turn to ascend the gray pyramid, the men would haul it up. Above them, on a small platform, four men and four women worked at their struggling sacrifice with black obsidian blades, hacking and sawing and singing as it thrashed. Nordholm squinted to see. Each of the eight was nude, save for the jade and gold masks over their faces and the hot blood slicking their brown bodies.

“I cannot simply watch,” Nordholm hissed again. They had trudged through muck and rivers, staved off swarms of malaria-bearing Anopheles argyritarsis, and eluded boars, cats, assassins, and militias. For a man of science nearing seventy years old, leering at this lost ritual from the underbrush was wholly unacceptable.

Nordholm pushed himself to his feet. Elf tried to grab him, but Nordholm was able to elude his grasp.

“Stay down!” Elf ordered, but Nordholm knew such commands did not apply to him. He shoved the ferns aside and lurched into the clearing at the pyramid's base, ignoring his throbbing knees.

The husk-masked men took up a frenzied shout and rushed toward him, machetes raised. Elf emerged from the jungle behind Nordholm, rifle to his shoulder, shouting them back. He fired once, taking out a charging man at the knee, then a second time, this bullet going high into the night sky. The chanting from above ceased, the charging men stopped in their tracks. The screaming above ended seconds later, silenced by the quick slip of a sharp knife across a soft throat. Only the moans of the shot man broke the silence, rolling on the ground as he clutched at his ruined leg.

A man called down from the pyramid in an ancient tongue, quaking with anger behind a serpent mask.

“He wants us up there,” Elf translated. The German had learned the languages of Mexico, even the forgotten ones, but Nordholm had not the time for such frivolities. The language of science was universal, and he did not bother with those dumb, deaf, or illiterate.

“Good, let us go,” Nordholm snapped. He marched forward, only for husk-faced guards to close in on him.

“He does not want you there as an observer,” Elf told him.

“But observe we shall.” With that the old man shoved the guards aside, only for them to entrap him in their iron grips, machetes to his throat. Nordholm tried to wrench his arms free, but they were warrior men of the jungle, and he was no match for their primordial strength. Elf did not struggle. The guards took his rifle and rested their blades on his neck as well.

“It seems you have gotten us into another one, Doctor Nordholm,” the German lamented.

“We always manage to get ourselves out of them,” the Norwegian replied. The serpent man shouted orders from above, and the husked men parroted them, dragging the pair to the foot of the pyramid. Nordholm struggled forward, his knees throbbing.

“Stop that!” Nordholm objected. The husked men ignored his protests. Their dull blades scraped against the yellow-white stubble sprouting from his neck. When they reached the stairs, each step too small to walk upon comfortably, they threw him to the ground. The old man's knee struck a stone, causing him to cry out.

“Control yourself,” Elf hissed.

“I am not a child to be scolded and beaten,” Nordholm wheezed. He tried to push himself off the ground, but the knee gave way, and he fell again. He spat on the ground, took a shuddering breath, then yelped at the husked men: “I cannot climb this damned mountain!”

He looked up to find that the machete-wielders had backed away. Elf was standing over him, but staring upward.

“You will not have to climb,” he said.

Unyielding hands hooked under Nordholm's thin arms and swept him backward. Undulating chanting rose from the natives that pulsed inside Nordholm's inner ear and radiated through his bones. He was moved quickly, passed from hand to hand, dragged up the stairs just as they had done with the struggling sacrifices before him. His feet bounced off each step, sending disorienting shocks of pain through his heels with each impact. Images flashed by, too fast to react to: masked faces glaring down at him, a disturbingly calm Elf wrapped in netting and carried stiff as a board, hands grabbing at him and moving up his body like skittering Acanthoscurria geniculatai, the blue moon blazing day-bright overhead as orange torches whipped by. The motion, the hands, the chanting, it turned his stomach, but he somehow held the bile back.

The pain radiating through Nordholm's knee and ankles had been joined by a new ache originating in his shoulders. The scientist groaned and arched his back to find that he had stopped moving, that the hands were off of him. He didn't know his eyes were closed until he opened them. The nude men and women were staring down at him, blood dripping from their bodies.

A woman wearing a golden Brachypemla hamorii mask, her eight eyes carved from raw jade and her palps worked from rosewood, pointed her obsidian knife at Nordholm and yelled a foreign curse. The man with the snake mask gave her an order and she pointed her blade away. Elf was tossed onto the dais, landing heavily. He scrambled to his feet, practiced and ready to fight. He found eight sacrificial blades wavering in his face, moonlight causing the obsidian to glow from within. He lowered his fists to casually brush the dirt from his khaki pants.

Elf offered a halfhearted explanation. The priestess in the lizard mask hissed in response. The snake man barked another order.

“On your feet, doctor,” Elf said. He gently lifted the old man off the hard stone. Nordholm groaned but managed to keep his balance despite his throbbing knee and ankles. The peak of the pyramid glistened. His clothes were soaked in red.

Nordholm noted the nude natives around him: the snake, the Brachypemla hamorii, a tusked hog, a crude rendition of a Centruroiodes gracilis with its claws and coiled stinger bunched onto the mask, a spotted cat, a toothed fish, a striped lizard, and a bat. None of them hid their nudity. Some stood scared, others curious, others furious. The chanting from the torchbearers was reaching a crescendo.

“I am a scholar,” Nordholm told them. Elf translated. The cultists seemed unimpressed.

“I have read of you,” Nordholm continued. He spoke slow so Elf could keep up. “It is said your ancestors worshiped the sun. You follow something else.”

The snake-masked man snapped at this, babbling a heated objection.

“This is not worship, it is... necessity,” Elf translated, but he did not seem sure of the words. The snake kept talking, faster than Elf could keep up. “The many... eaters... must be fed. They are Christians, but they... have an obligation to... continue this... tradition, I believe.”

“The many eaters?” Nordholm asked, doubting Elf's interpretation of the snake's words.

“Thousand, or many, eaters, feeders, mouths, devourers if you seek the theatrical,” Elf said. The snake continued his tirade, and Elf spoke for him, “They claim to be Christians, that they are saved. What they do here is for survival.”

“Indeed,” Nordholm mused. He leaned to see the rest of the bloody stone platform, beyond the ring of masked people. A massive lith sat on the southern corner, dragged from its cradle at the center. The deep furrows that revealed where it had been moved led back to a gaping square hole in the center of the dais, blacker than any shadow Nordholm had ever seen. Even the full moon could not illuminate the inky abyss. Gore leaked over its edges and disappeared drop by drop.

“The many eaters must be fed,” Elf repeated. The snake looked deflated, as if this whole ordeal was more than he could handle. The B. hamorii-masked woman screeched at him, waving her knife at the two outsiders then pointing at the hole.

“She says that we should be the next sacrifice,” Elf told Nordholm.

“That, I gathered,” the scientist muttered. He hiked up his trousers, smoothed down his yellow-white tufts of hair, stood as straight as his old back would allow, and said: “Tell them we are here to help, that we can ease their burden. Tell them that we are followers of the King of the Jews. We can feed the eaters.”

Elf's face twisted in disgust at the words, but he said them anyway. The snake had no response to this. His followers who had looked scared before now looked relieved. The B. hamorii woman and the fish, who had been on edge and angry already, were shaking with rage.

The snake finally found his tongue.

“They have done this... work or duty,... since they were children. Their parents and grandparents taught them.”

“Teach me,” Nordholm implored.

The B. hamorii woman objected again, but the snake shushed her, then spoke to Nordholm again.

“He says that many years ago there was an army of the eaters, so powerful that it drank the ocean and devoured the earth, not even leaving the bones of men. The great cities of the Maya set aside their wars and banded together to wipe the eaters from the land. The battle was terrible, but men won. They found the last... home... of the eaters in the ground here but could not destroy it. Instead, they placed this temple, this mountain, atop it, to hold them beneath until the sun died. They used powerful magic to put them to sleep. The Mayans died before the sun, but their children were left with their burden, to keep the eaters fat and content, so that they may never seek to escape and devour the earth again.”

“A quaint tale. Tell him we have an army, one that would put the Mayans to shame. We will take on his task. He may leave, with his honor and his life.”

“He does not think this an honor. He thinks it a curse. Or an illness,” Elf said.

“We are the cure.”

The snake heard these words and looked at his people, conflict obvious inside him. He spoke again, a few soft syllables.

“He thinks you should see what you ask for.”

The snake stepped to the edge of the pyramid, standing at the head of the staircase. He shouted down to the torchbearers. A shriek sounded from the jungle. Four men emerged from the underbrush, dragged a screaming sow on a rope. The pig dug in its hooves, but it was no match for the men. They passed the ropes to the chanting torchbearers who began heaving the struggling animal up the steps in rhythm to their song, the same way they had lifted Elf and the doctor. It took seconds to haul the panicked animal to the dais. The cat and the fish slashed its tendons with their black knives, leaving it helpless on the slick stones. Its shrieks were like those of a human woman. The snake spoke to Elf.

“The songs calm the eaters,” Elf explained over the ruckus. “The blood, or wine, brings one of them up.”

With that, the B. hamorii and the C. gracilis dragged the crippled sow to the edge of the hole. The stones were sloped inward here. They carved into the hog, drawing a torrent of blood forth from the screaming animal.

“The ...sound, the screams, makes the eaters cautious. If they have fear, they only send one.”

Over the chanting, over the pig's excruciating din, Nordholm could hear a scraping sound, one he knew well.

“The eaters will feed on pig, tapir, cow, birds, anything with red blood. But they have a favorite prey, one they do not fear. That is why they wear the masks,” Elf said. The scraping sound grew louder.

“When the eaters hunger, they reach, bite for everything. It is... better... to be unclothed and lose a hand than to let them catch a... fabric or textile... and pull you in.”

The pig still screamed, but its thrashing had grown weaker.

“How often do they feed?” Nordholm asked.

“Every full moon, then they... sleep,” Elf answered with the snake's words.

“I see,” Nordholm said. “I can make great works with this.”

Elf did not translate his musings.

The scraping reached the top of the hole and the masked cultists recoiled away, silent, knives bared between them and the abyss.

“Please,” Nordholm begged the approaching sound.

A thick head emerged from the darkness, heavy with exoskeletal armor. If it was indeed a member of the Velocitermes genus, as Nordholm suspected, this individual would be nearly a meter long. Large spikes and knobs adorned its cranium, which gleamed in a black and gold spotted pattern under the moonlight. The head swayed back and forth, taking in the scene with its waving sensilla. The stink of pig blood excited it and it clacked its sharp mandibles together.

“Yes,” Nordholm said, only for the bat to grab him from behind and clamp a hand over his mouth. He struggled, but he was no match for the younger man.

Before them, the Velocitermes hauled itself the rest of the way out of the shadow. The spikes and spotted pattern continued down its thorax and abdomen, as did the armor. It was the size of a mid-sized dog and appeared to have the mandible strength to chew through stone.

Nordholm's eyes went wide. He'd long posited that modern insects of this size existed, despite his former mentor's rejection of his theory. The insect scuttled one more cautious step forward and bit into the squealing pig, gushing more blood over the stone dais. It dragged the beast backward, retreating into the blackness with its prize.

Nordholm shoved his way out of the bat's grip and staggered forward until he was standing on the lip of the shaft.

The snake gasped some words of warning which he ignored.

“It is all I wanted it to be,” Nordholm whispered.

“What are you saying?” Elf asked him.

“They will do,” Nordholm clarified.

The snake was nervous, chattering away in his idiotic tongue, and the B. hamorii woman was yelling and waving her knife.

“Are you certain?” Elf asked. The fish, bat, boar, and cat had backed away from the German with their knives leveled, suspicious that he was no longer translating.

“I am.”

“Very well.” Elf unwound the netting from his head, revealing his own face to the masked cultists. His flesh was gray as a corpse's, without a strand of hair sprouting anywhere on his head.

The strange chemicals that had blanched his skin and dissolved his hair had also turned his beady eyes pink and made him a remorseless, peerless killer.

Elf struck like a tornado. The bat and fish were already bouncing their necks off the steep stone stairs before the cat and hog knew he was moving. He slithered around and snapped the cat's narrow wrist then caught her dropped knife with his free hang and flung it almost absent-mindedly. The B. hamorii caught the obsidian in her throat. The boar charged, but a quick twist placed the cat between Elf and his blade. The boar's knife plunged deep into the masked woman's breast. She feel limp and Elf tossed her aside. Her corpse bounced down the stairs as well, coming to a rest next to the broken bodies of the bat and fish.

The boar sputtered in shock, shaking so hard that he nearly dropped his bloodied knife. Elf smirked, drew his own combat knife and advanced on the distraught cultist. A contemptuous parry was all it took to swat the boar's knife from his hands. A quick slash and stab ended the man's life on the spot.

The snake was frozen in place but the C. gracilis charged Elf's exposed back. Nordholm had already removed the small steel tube from his pocket and popped off its lid. He aimed it and pressed a button. The tube puffed compressed gas and launched an adolescent male Hypoctonus antimii at her. The small whip scorpion thawed in an instant landed furious on her naked back mid-stride. It only took an instant of dermal contact with the H. antimii's neurotoxic barbs to send her into a wracking seizure. She collapsed mid-stride, cracking her chin on the pyramid's hard stone.

The snake was suddenly alone. The B. hamorii had run, abandoned him, and the rest of them were dead or drooling. The snake babbled in fear, dropping his own knife as if it were red hot.

Elf pulled a single road flare from his pocket and ignited it. The light sputtered as he held it above his head, high over the jungle canopy. A volley of rifle fire erupted from the woods, mowing down the husk- and wood-masked cultists below. The B. hamorii died before she reached the bottom of the stairs. Platoons of gray-uniformed men emerged from the underbrush, their red armbands bright in the night, firing into the panicked survivors of the first barrage.

Elf turned back to Nordholm, stepping over the spasming woman wracked by H. antimii venom to grasp the snake by the back of his neck.

“Do you want him?” Elf asked.

Nordholm smirked and turned back to the blackness. He could hear scuttling deep below. Elf dragged the snake across rough stone until the two of them stood next to Nordholm, staring down into the abyss.

“Let us see what he is afraid of,” Nordholm said.

Elf dropped the flare down the shaft. They watched it fall, deeper and deeper, far further down than the pyramid was tall.

“Dios mío,” the snake whimpered. The flare reflected red off the exoskeletons of a thriving colony of gargantuan Velocitermes for its entire descent. If their swarming density was similar to that of their more-familiar cousins, there had to thousands, tens of thousands. Nordholm admired the sight until their skittering bodies drowned out the flare's light. Their clicks and skittering scratches were growing louder. The eaters were coming out of their hibernation. They were magnificent.

“Doctor?” Elf asked after a moment, still holding the masked priest. Nordholm shook himself out of his trance.

“No, he is redundant now,” he finally answered. “Everything your Reich needs waits below.”

The snake struggled against Elf, but it did not help. The German dropped him down the shaft. For his sake, Nordholm hoped the fall killed him before the eaters began their feast. All around the pyramid, Elf's man began gathering the bodies. The woman with the C. gracilis mask whimpered.

“I will take special care of your legacy,” Nordholm assured her. He limped over to watch the Germans’ grisly work with her. Elf shouted orders at them from the peak. The late stewards were stacked at the bottom of the steep stairs. Elf's men set aside their weapons, rolled up their sleeves, and formed a train up the pyramid. They began passing the bodies up with practiced efficiency.

The C. gracilis wept quietly as her comrades rose and passed her. The Germans made short work of it, ferrying the corpses up the stairs and dumping them down the pit like a conveyor belt. None shied from their duty for these were Elf's sworn men: they'd have done much more without a second thought.

The skittering below reached a frenzy. The eaters had not feasted so well in centuries.

“Do you not see?” Nordholm asked the paralyzed woman, sobbing behind her mask. “You will placate this colony as you have always done, and when next they rise, I will be here as their shepherd and guide.”

The last corpse fell down the shaft, limp and bloody. Nordholm listened. The colony was satiating itself. They would no doubt rest comfortably. The next full moon was thirty days hence. More than enough time to prepare. The hard work would begin in the morning.

The C. gracilis chirped again. Her fingers were starting to twitch.

“Your traditions are in good hands,” Nordholm assured her. H. antimii venom was fast-acting but the body metabolized it quickly. He barked at the closest of Elf's men: “Give them dessert.”

The soldier looked to his leader for confirmation; Elf nodded. The C. gracilis managed a single gasp before she fell into the hungry dark.

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Copyright © 2024 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

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