Yet Another Night of the Living Dead!
Disclaimer: "I know my value." - Margaret "Peggy" Carter, Agent Carter
Chapter 13: Final Battle, Part 2!
Redstone City Hall
"You got something special whipped up for the freak kids?" Pollock asked the Mad Arab. Alhazred smiled wickedly.
"Indeed, I do." The wizard opened his Necronomicon. He then started waving his hand over the open book and chanting in a strange language.
"Look out!" Raven yelled, blasting a Deadite with her shotgun. "He's up to something!"
"The hell is he doing?!" A rocky-skinned Jason muttered as he smashed two Deadite's heads together. Alhazred finished his chant, then thrust the book up in the air. A sickly green glow could be seen from the book's pages. The book's light exploded. "What was that?!"
"Go back to your graves, you damned zombies!" Garrett fired his gun at several Deadites.
Blam! Blam!
"AGH!" One Deadite screamed as one of Garrett's shots hit him in the eye. "My eye! You son of a-!"
Blam!
A third shot downed it.
"God, I hate it when they talk. It's even worse when they talk." Garrett grumbled. The ground started to rumble. "Wha-?! Earthquake?!"
"An earthquake? Here?!" Taylor mumbled in confusion.
"I got a bad feeling about this..." Raven mumbled.
BOOM!
"RAAAAAAAARRRRRR!" An unearthly roar, sounding like something ancient and horrific was heard.
"Oh, no..." Jenni gasped.
"This is not good..." Johnny B mumbled.
"Hey, look." Lisa pointed at a lump in the ground. "A bump in the road." The bump burst open, and a monsterous-looking clawed green hand burst out of the ground. "Hey, whose hand is that?"
"Something only Lovecraft could dream up, Lisa." Johnny B answered.
Monsters burst out of the ground. They reminded Johnny B of Cthulhu, complete with the bat-like wings and tentacle "beards" that all seemed to move independently. The beasts towered over the heroes, standing at least thirteen feet tall each.
"Oh, no." The genius mumbled. "Oh, no...no no no no no..."
"Uh...anybody got a plan?" Garrett looked around. Raven gulped nervously.
"I think I'm gonna need a bigger gun."
"What do we do, bossman?" Mike asked Jason. The leader of the Southside Rockers looked around at the monsters.
"We stand and fight."
"Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that." Mike gripped his staff tighter as he looked at the creatures. "Sure. We can fight these dragon-octopus-Predator-ugly-muthas."
"Damn, you crazy." Eric shook his head and glanced at the monsters.
"We have to get the book!" Vicki exclaimed. "If we get the book off of him, we can undo this and send these creatures back from whence they came."
"We're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna die!" Hack and Flak muttered in fright, holding each other.
"Not if I can help it, boys!" Jenni tried to reassure them bravely. "We'll be okay..." She looked at the glaring monsters. "I hope..."
"Uh, Jen..."
"What is it, Hack?"
"In case we don't make it, I just want to say sorry about the whole 'threatening to cut your face thing'."
"Thanks, Hack."
"The hell are those?" Pollock blinked.
"Little pieces of the essence of one of the Great Old Ones." Alhazred explained. "Dread Cthulhu himself."
"Great Old...Huh." Pollock muttered, scratching his head. "Guess Lovecraft didn't make that stuff up."
"Ah yes, the author." Alhazred smiled wickedly. "No, he did not."
"Oh God, you guys hear that?!" Johnny B yelled. "These things are bits of Cthulhu himself! According to Lovecraft, people can go insane just from looking at him!"
"Good, we'll send Lisa to fight him! She's already nuts, he can't possibly make her any worse." Mike cracked in an attempt to calm his nerves, pointing his staff at Lisa.
"Hey!" The redhead yelled.
"Alhazred, I swear to the spirits, if we make it through this, I will find a way to shove this gun up both ends and fire it until it is nothing more than molten slag!" Raven roared angrily at the wizard.
"If you survive, dear lady." Alhazred snapped his fingers. "Kill them all, my creations! Wipe their worthless hides off the face of the Earth!" Pollack pulled the drone's remote from a satchel he had over his shoulder.
"This'll be interesting footage to record." The rogue general muttered to himself as he made the drone move slightly closer to the battle, but still far enough away to be safe, using its zoom lens to get a closer look at the battle.
The creatures roared.
"Man, we never had to deal with crap like this until the freaks showed up." Garrett mumbled, pointing his gun at the creatures.
"Somehow, Deputy, I don't think that your service pistol will be much help against these monsters." Johnny B. remarked.
"Shut up, freak." Garrett grumbled. "YOW!" The lawman and the scientist barely managed to dodge the creature's claws. The rest charged after the first.
Chaos had erupted, and Abdul Alhazred, the Mad Arab, laughed in delight.
"Look at them!" He laughed madly and gleefully. "Look at those fools! They think they can withstand the might of the Great Old Ones!"
"Uh, Abdul?" Pollock asked nervously. "Those things...they are under control, right?"
"Perfectly." Alhazred reassured. "They are mine to command."
"Damn it!" Raven cursed as she blasted at one of the monsters with her shotgun. "Die, you ugly mothers! When I shoot you, you are supposed to die!"
"I gotta admit, this is an interesting change from my usual job!" Taylor yelped as he dodged a strike from another creature and shot at it with his gun. "Normally, I'm just catching kids making graffiti or loitering around at this time of night YEOW!" He dodged the creature's fist.
"Uh! Yipe! Whoa!" Vicki leaped, ducked, and dodged a monster's strike, while throwing hex bolts like crazy. "My hexbolts aren't doing a lot of good!" She observed that her hexbolts were annoying the creatures...in the way people got annoyed by mosquito bites. "I need to get to that book!" She noticed Lisa flying around above the creatures, firing gouts of flame at them.
"Burn, baby! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!" The redheaded Asian girl laughed as she smacked the Cthulhuoids with fireballs. "Eat fire, ya ugly dragon tentacle-men!"
"This is crazy!" Jason yelled over at Vicki as he blasted a Cthulhuoid with a golden energy beam from his hand. "If there was just one of these damned things, we could concentrate all our power on it, and it would go down!"
"Lisa's flying around, distracting the creatures! I have an idea!" Vicki answered. She dodged another Cthulhoid's strike and yelled up at her. "LISA!"
"Hi, Vicki!" Lisa waved happily.
"Lisa! Get Alhazred! Get the book!"
"Okay!" Vicki nodded, saluting jauntily. The scatterbrained keyboardist flew towards the two villains. "Hi, Mr. Wizard! We want your booky book!"
"Aw, hell! One of the freaks is coming here..." Pollock reached for a gun he had holstered under his jacket, but he was stopped with a raised arm from Alhazred.
The Mad Arab smirked. "Allow me, my friend." He opened the Necronomicon and pointed it at Lisa. "I have just the thing to cool this fiery female." The book's pages started to glow blue as he spoke.
FWASH!
A powerful jet of water erupted from the book. Lisa's eyes widened.
"No! You are not washing me out!" Lisa deftly dodged the stream of water.
"You missed, Abdul." Pollock remarked dryly. Alhazred shook his head with a smirk.
"No, I have not." To Lisa's surprise, the stream of water seemed to curve on its own, like a snake lashing out towards its prey. The pyrokinetic mutant squealed and tried to outmaneuver the water stream, but it seemed to stay on her like it was a heat-seeking missile.
"Hey, no fair!" Lisa wailed as she did another loop-de-loop. "Water's not supposed to do that!"
"Aw, no!" Vicki groaned. Jason, who had grown in height to match one of the Cthulhoids, and was grappling with one, noticed something.
He's distracted! The Southside Misfits' leader realized. Only one chance! He twisted himself and held up the Chtulhoid. He then tossed the creature at Alhazred.
"Agh! Glub!" Lisa flailed as the water stream finally caught up to her and smacked her into the ground, putting out her flames. "I hate water!" The keyboardist stomped on the ground in frustration. "Water SUCKS!"
"Abdul, watch out!" Pollack yelled.
WHUMP!
Before either the rogue general or the sorcerer could do anything to stop it, the tossed and roaring Cthulhoid slammed into the two, and knocked them down to the ground.
"No!" Alhazred yelped as the chaos made him drop the Necronomicon. The Book of the Dead slid out of his grasp. The sorcerer panicked and tried to dig himself out from under the creature. Another Southside Misfit noticed this.
"I got it!" Johnny B zipped up to the book and managed to grab it.
"NO!" Alhazred yelped. The scientist zipped back to Vicki, and handed the book to her.
"Here! Do it!" Johnny yelled. Vicki nodded.
"Right!" The mystically-tuned mutant opened the book and started to chant a spell.
"Aw, hell!" Pollock pulled out his gun and pointed it at Vicki.
Blam!
"Agh!" Pollock clutched his hand as his gun was shot out of it. Sheriff Taylor and Deputy Garrett pointed their weapons at him.
"Don't you move, pal." Taylor growled. The Necronomicon started to emit a white glow, and a vortex kicked up right on the book. The Cthulhoids screamed and roared as the wind sucked them and the Deadites back into the Necronomicon.
"No! NO! NOOOOOOOO!" Alhazred screamed as the Book of the Dead sucked him back into itself. Vicki slammed the book shut, making a loud THUD sound. Vicki fell to her knees, panting.
"Goddess, that spell is draining." She wiped some sweat from her brow. "It's over. It's finally over."
"Not as long as that psycho sorcerer is in that book." Jason sighed, taking a seat next to her.
"I still don't get why we can't just take a flamethrower to that thing." Mike groaned, rubbing his shoulder. "It's just a friggin' book!"
"I tried that." Johnny B sighed. "No good. Whatever is protecting that thing makes it completely fireproof."
"It's the dark magic that was used to make this book." Vicki explained.
"You stupid little brat freak!" Pollock roared. "You just wrecked everything!"
"She wrecked things, General?" Raven growled, grabbing the rogue general by his jacket's lapels, and pulling his face close to hers. "You put the entire damned world at risk with your little stunt! Did you have any idea what you were screwing around with?"
"That book would've allowed America to defeat its enemies! I'm a patriot!" Pollock argued.
"Some patriot!" Raven pushed the general to the ground, Pollock let out a slight grunt as his wounded hand hit the ground. She looked at Taylor and Garrett. "Get his hand looked at. Don't want him to suffer any further problems before his court-martial." Taylor smirked.
"Yes, ma'am." The sheriff chuckled. He shoved Pollack's hands behind his back. "General...?"
"Gregory." Raven supplied. "His name is Gregory." Taylor nodded.
"Right. General Gregory Pollock, you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent." He and Garrett took Pollock to his cruiser. "You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney-"
"I know my rights!" The general snapped at the sheriff as he was put in the back of the car.
"I trust you will be taking care of him?" Taylor asked Raven. "He is military, after all."
"We'll send some Joes to pick him up for his court-martial." Raven told the sheriff. "Just hang on to him until we do."
"And give them this." Johnny B handed Sheriff Taylor Pollock's drone. "It got shot down during that brawl with Cthulhu's little siblings. Tough little thing. The footage it was recording is recoverable."
"Thanks." Taylor took the drone and handed it off to Garrett.
"I guess you freaks ain't so bad." Garrett shrugged. The two said their goodbyes and drove to the station. Jenni Starr sighed and sat down on a curb, Hack and Flak next to her. The blonde sighed.
"We were supposed to come here to play a fun gig, and we ended up fighting Deadites and Little Old Ones. Wonderful."
"It could be worse." Flak shrugged. "We could have gotten eaten by them or something."
"Yeah, I suppose." Jenni admitted.
"Say, uhm..." Flak rubbed the back of his head nervously. "You don't suppose you could get us tickets t your gig, huh?"
"I suppose I could." Jenni shrugged. Hack and Flak whooped in delight.
"Awesome!"
"...we just nearly got killed." Jenni reminded. She then sighed. "Why do we always encounter crud like this?"
"This isn't new for you?"
"Not really." Jenni admitted. "We've faced that crazy wizard before. We do tend to get some of the more supernatural type of bad guys." A shrug. "I dunno why."
"So...that thing you said earlier about you kicking supervillain ass..." Hack rubbed the back of his head. "That real?"
"You just saw." Jenni stretched her arms up into the sky. "Ah, that's better. Yup. We fight bad guys back home in Chicago when we're not rockin' the stage."
"That is pretty cool." Hack smiled. Jenni chuckled.
"Yeah, it is."
Flak grinned at the blonde. "Yeah, it's pretty cool."
"I just hope you learned your lesson, buddy." Jenni glanced at Flak. The punk put his hands up in a peaceful gesture as he face formed a sheepish grin.
"I'll be a good boy from now on. Just please don't hit me with your Jedi mind trick again."
"Deal." The two shook hands. Raven took a seat next to Vicki.
"You alright, kid?" The Native American woman asked in concern. Vicki nodded.
"Yeah, fine, thanks."
"The man's like a cockroach, isn't he?"
"Yeah, he is." Vicki sighed down at the Necronomicon. "What do we do with this thing? The Joes have tried to destroy it, but they couldn't. We can't protect it. This thing has caused nothing but trouble for us, for this town, for Ash..." Raven took the book.
"I'll call Hawk. He may know a man who can take care of this thing."
"Is anyone still up for playing the gig tonight?" Jason sighed, looking around at his bandmates. They all looked at each other.
"I don't think so." Mike rubbed the back of his head. "After what this town went through, I don't think anyone is in the mood for rockin' out tonight. I know I'm not."
"Ah, that's a shame." Hack noted. "You guys performing here was the talk of the town."
"Maybe we should stick around a while and help with the cleanup." Jason suggested. "It is the least we can do."
"That's a good idea." Raven nodded. "It would help things out a bit, until the nearest Damage Control affiliate can help take care of the mess."
"And the town may be in a better mood for a rock 'n' roll party, then. Alright!" Mike whooped, pumping his fist into the air.
"We'll crash on the bus." Raven nodded in agreement. She glanced at her Joe-Com. "Right now, I have to make a call.
General Hawk's office, A few days later
"Our Chicago-based group dealt with quite a bit of trouble before thanks to this thing." General Hawk explained to his guest before holding out the book to him. "I'm hoping you can keep it safe."
"Ah, the Necronomicon." The man, a handsome man with black hair that was gray at the temples, a neatly-trimmed beard, and clad in a blue costume with an ornate red cloak noted as he took the Book of The Dead. "I have heard about its recent activity."
"Indeed. I am sorry to bother you on such short notice..."
"When it comes to the Necronomicon, it was no bother at all." Stephen Strange took the Necronomicon. "Tomes like this are hard to destroy. My experiences with the Darkhold have taught me that. But I will try to find a way."
"Thanks, Doctor. I really appreciate it."
"You are welcome." Dr. Strange vanished in a flash of light.
Thanks for reading! Ending was a nightmare to write, but finally glad to get this done!