1924. Near the Tigris river. The sun was blazing, sweat poured down
the brows of many men as they dug away the earth to uncover the long
forgotten remains of an ancient castle. As the native Mesopotapians worked
at their labour, two Americans walked around the edges of the
archaeological dig which they had worked long hard hours in the library of
Princeton University to get the funding for. This was a dream come true
for young Henry Jones Jr., better known as "Indiana Jones" to his friends
and enemies alike. For the first time ever in his short 24 year old life,
he was starting to live out his dreams as an archaeologist... well not
exactly.
"I cannot thank you enough for this oppourtunity Dr. Getly, working as your assistant on this dig will help me get that professorship at Princeton for shure!"
"It is the least I could do after you helped me piece together all the necessary information that made this project possible. To think that we are the first living people to visit Candar in 500 years."
Candar Castle, originally an outpost for the Knights of Europe after they captured it from the Moors during the First Crusade. Legend said that as the Moors fled from the Crusaders, one of them stopped and shouted that they were fools and that their prize would be their death. During the second, third, and fourth Crusades, Candar remained a steady Christian outpost, but in the years that followed, many scribes of that era claimed that a most unholy evil began to skulk upon the land. Then in the early 1400's the location of Candar disappeared from the memories of both Christian and Moor alike, and that it's very existence was no more real than myth. Piecing together the surviving copies of records of the Crusades, Dr. Ernest Getly, Professor of Archaeology, and Princeton senior university student, Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr. managed to find clues to where Candar had once stood, and by a stroke of good fortune had managed to convince the Dean and other members of the Archaeology department to fund an expedition to Mesopotapia to ascertain the validity of their research.
An excited cry rang up among the diggers. Sulla, one of the diggers ran to Dr. Getly and Indy shouting "Come quick, we have found a passage! We Have Found A Passage!!" Dr. Getly dashed off with Sulla, and Indy followed soon after putting on his fedora hat and grabbing his whip and pistol. Experience had taught him that it was always a good idea to be prepared.
They came to a hole in the lowest part of the dig where they found that torches and a rope ladder were all prepared and ready for the professor and his assistant to begin exploration. Dr. Getly descended first, followed closely by Indy, after a few minutes of investigation, they realized that they were standing in the catacombs of ancient Candar. At the end of the tunnel they noticed that the symbols on the walls began to change and that they led and surrounded a door that any ancient Christian would have claimed was the gate to hell.
"Can you make out the writing on the walls?" Indy asked Dr. Getly as they held their torches close to the carved symbols.
"It appears to be a kind of Cuneiform."
"Cuneiform!? Are you sure?"
"Positive."
"Then that would mean that this door has been around since the Sumerians, that's at least 3000 years ago."
"Yes, but if you take a closer look, you will notice that some of the markings leading up to the door were obviously made by Christians, centuries later. They are warnings."
"I can see that Dr. Getly, but I can only understand the Cuneiform loosely. I think it says something about a place of safekeeping until... Doomsday... I think."
A couple of hours later, Indy and Dr. Getly were joined by a team of diggers armed with crowbars. After a little effort the door was pried open and the two Americans entered with torches. The room was empty, except for a book and an evil looking dagger on a pedestal. Dr. Getly picked up the book and looked at it closely. The cover was very unusual, it felt like a kind of leather and there was a face on the front, frozen in an agonised scream.
"Jones, we have made the discovery of the century! According to the experts something like this book should not exist!!" He opened the book. "The material in this book indicates that it was written before the Crusades, centuries older than anything else I have ever seen. This is practically impossible! There is not even a sign of deterioration." Dr. Getly excitedly turned the pages with a big smile. Then he stopped somewhere in the middle of the book, all expression left his face and his eyes became vacant.
"Dr. Getly?" Indy said, unsure of what was going on. Dr. Getly did not react, instead he spoke words with a voice and a language that was not his own. Indy only partially understood what his older college was saying and he did not like a word of it. He felt a cold shiver down his spine. Suddenly he heard screams and the sound of footsteps running away from the small chamber. Something had spooked the diggers. Before Indy had a chance to figure out why, he saw it and felt it. Air was passing by his face quickly and coolly. A gigantic vortex of wind and smoke had appeared behind the pedestal and anything that was not extremely heavy was being pulled into it. The dagger was the first thing sucked in, the book came out of Dr. Getly's hands and followed. Getly collapsed on the floor. Indy ran to his side and checked his pulse, there was none. Before he could do anything else, he felt the pull of the vortex on him and was sucked in.
***
When Indy awoke he felt like he had just fallen off a cliff while on fire. A quick check told him that nothing was broken, and miraculously, he managed to stand up. As he got his bearings, he realized it was sundown and that he was on the street of a city he had never seen before. What really surprised him though was the state of disrepair everything was in. It looked like there had not been anything alive around here for a long time. He felt a familiar shiver down his back and heard a screeching noise above him. He looked up and saw something that looked like a gargoyle. He then heard a snakelike voice that came from everywhere and nowhere at once.
-FRESH SOUL.-
The "Gargoyle" continued to circle above like a demonic vulture, while the voice continued to chant.
-FRESH SOUL FRESH SOUL FRESH SOUL FRESH SOUL FRESH SOUL-
Indy then realized that the "Gargoyle" was not alone. Three figures appeared almost out of thin air, two at the beginning of the street and one at the end. They slowly and stiffly approached. The chanting voice continued.
-FRESH SOUL FRESH SOUL FRESH SOUL FRESH SOUL FRESH SOUL-
As the figures got closer, he saw that they were not completely human, their faces were grotesque masks of evil and their eyes were milk white.
-WE'LL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL!-
Scared out of his mind. Indy drew his pistol and fired off three well aimed shots into the heads of his attackers. They dropped. The Gargoyle continued to circle and shriek. Just as Indy was about to holster his gun and be on his way, his attackers got up. The voice cackled insidiously.
-WE ARE STILL GOING TO SWALLOW YOUR SOUL! -
Knowing that he only had three shots left and that bullets were practically useless on these "things", Indy did what any red blooded American would do. He ran. The three uglies could not keep up his pace, but the Gargoyle gave chase, shrieking with sadistic glee. The voice joined in.
-FEEDING TIME! FEEDING TIME! FEEDING TIME!-
The Gargoyle swooped down, Indy expected it and ducked at the last moment. The Gargoyle growled in annoyance. Knowing that he could not keep on ducking and running all night, Indy ran into the nearest building he could find. He recognized it as a movie theatre, and he hoped that would give him a chance to escape. As he entered the lobby he stopped in front of a poster for a film and looked at the date. "Coming to Theatres in 2003." Indy felt like someone had punched him in the guts and for further torment had also kneed him in the groin. 2003. Impossible. Stuff like this only happened in books like "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", not in the real world. Before the shock had ended, two arms broke through the wall and grabbed him by the throat. He heard the voice again.
-NOWHERE TO RUN. FEEDING TIME! TIME TO SWALLOW YOUR SOUL!!!-
As Indy struggled against the iron grip, barely breathing he heard footsteps coming up from behind him and he knew that could only mean more trouble. Before everything went dark, he heard the sound of a small motor, flesh being cut, a shotgun, a various number of swears and curses, and the phrase "Hail to the King Baby!"
***
Ash was having a bad day. He had been on the hunt for a good thirty- six hours now and had not had a single bit of action. All he wanted to do was find a few nasty Deadites, dismember the hell out of them, burn the remains, and then go back to his new "home". As he wandered the streets at sundown with his trusty old "Boomstick" on his back and "Buzz" attatched to his right stump, his mind flashed back to about five years ago when he awoke from his six hundred year long sleep, only to discover that it was seven hundred years instead. He could not believe how much of a moron he could be sometimes. After his initial scare had ended he managed to get a few new parts for his Delta 88, some new clothes, repaired his weapons, and even learned about what he had missed during his extra one hundred year nap.
After a controversial election for the year 2000 U.S. Presidency, a total buffoon from a third party won the race by default. After a slew of terrorist attacks occurred, the United States and it's allies decided to ignore UN policies and attack any country that had pissed them off in the last ten years. The facts got a little murky afterwards, but judging by the wreckage and the fact that most people these days were either Survivalists, Anarchists, or hosts for Deadites, nobody had won the war, and everybody had lost. With no real place to go or job to do, Ash had decided to dedicate his life to one cause. Deadite bounty hunting. Most villages he visited were more than respectful to anyone who could bring them news, and proof that a few more Deadites no longer existed.
Ash was about to remember his first time collecting a bounty when he heard a familiar noise. It was the scream of a harpy, a winged Deadite that usually acted as a scout for a pack. Judging from the following sounds of gunfire, Ash assumed that the Deadites had run into some trouble with their prey. If he was quick and lucky, he might get a cut of the bounty. He did not like competing for his supper, but a slice of pie was better than no pie at all. After tracking them down to an old movie theatre he realized that me might get a bigger share, his fellow bounty hunter was getting the life choked out of him by a Deadite that was the size of a wrestler. He fired up Buzz, loaded up his Boomstick, and charged at the Deadite shouting his warcry "Hail to the King Baby!"
***
All was dark, and then very slowly, Indy regained consciousness. As he came to and sat up, he realized that he did not have any weapons or his hat. He was in a cave somewhere, near a campfire and his stuff was piled on the other side of it, he then noticed a man close his own age was sitting next to it. He had black hair, an unusually large chin, scars all over his face, a semi-crazed look in his eyes, and a sawed off shotgun in his hands. One of which looked like a medieval gauntlet. He had both of those crazy eyes trained on Indy.
"So tell me stranger", the man said "what's your name and where are ya from?"
"Is that gun loaded?" Indy asked.
"Yup", the stranger replied. "Now answer the question" he said in a cold threatening voice.
"Indiana, Indiana Jones. I do a lot of travelling so I'm from a bit of everywhere." The man began to chuckle.
"Indiana Jones! That sounds like something I'd name my dog. Just how drunk were your parents when they named you?" He put down his gun and began laughing.
Indy decided that this guy must be a real lunatic, so until he could get his hands on his gun or whip, he had better just play along. He decided ask his "host' what his name was and where they were exactly.
"The name is Ash, and this used to be the United States of America, and we are on the outskirts of what used to be Dearborn Michigan."
"Uhhhh, what do you mean when you say used to be?"
"Where have you been man? How could you not know what's been going on for the last one hundred years?"
"I don't even know what year it is."
"Well, to make sure that you do know, it is 2093 AD, if you go by the Roman calendar. But most people who can still count refer to this as 93 IH."
"93 IH?"
"Ninety-three years In Hell."
Indy's jaw dropped in amazement. He could hardly believe his ears. The last time he checked, the year was 1924, but according to Ash, he had travelled 169 years into the future. His mind tried to reason out how such a thing could be possible. Then he recalled what Dr. Getly had said before the vortex had appeared. From what little he could translate, he figured that Getly had said something about opening a gate through time and space.
"You have been awfully quiet for the last few minutes." Ash said after awhile. "You got something on your mind?"
"You would not believe me if I told you."
"Try me." He pushed Indy's belongings towards him as a goodwill gesture. Indy began telling his story, he told Ash about the dig, the book and dagger Getly and he had found, and how he had ended up being in the movie theatre.
"I cannot thank you enough for this oppourtunity Dr. Getly, working as your assistant on this dig will help me get that professorship at Princeton for shure!"
"It is the least I could do after you helped me piece together all the necessary information that made this project possible. To think that we are the first living people to visit Candar in 500 years."
Candar Castle, originally an outpost for the Knights of Europe after they captured it from the Moors during the First Crusade. Legend said that as the Moors fled from the Crusaders, one of them stopped and shouted that they were fools and that their prize would be their death. During the second, third, and fourth Crusades, Candar remained a steady Christian outpost, but in the years that followed, many scribes of that era claimed that a most unholy evil began to skulk upon the land. Then in the early 1400's the location of Candar disappeared from the memories of both Christian and Moor alike, and that it's very existence was no more real than myth. Piecing together the surviving copies of records of the Crusades, Dr. Ernest Getly, Professor of Archaeology, and Princeton senior university student, Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr. managed to find clues to where Candar had once stood, and by a stroke of good fortune had managed to convince the Dean and other members of the Archaeology department to fund an expedition to Mesopotapia to ascertain the validity of their research.
An excited cry rang up among the diggers. Sulla, one of the diggers ran to Dr. Getly and Indy shouting "Come quick, we have found a passage! We Have Found A Passage!!" Dr. Getly dashed off with Sulla, and Indy followed soon after putting on his fedora hat and grabbing his whip and pistol. Experience had taught him that it was always a good idea to be prepared.
They came to a hole in the lowest part of the dig where they found that torches and a rope ladder were all prepared and ready for the professor and his assistant to begin exploration. Dr. Getly descended first, followed closely by Indy, after a few minutes of investigation, they realized that they were standing in the catacombs of ancient Candar. At the end of the tunnel they noticed that the symbols on the walls began to change and that they led and surrounded a door that any ancient Christian would have claimed was the gate to hell.
"Can you make out the writing on the walls?" Indy asked Dr. Getly as they held their torches close to the carved symbols.
"It appears to be a kind of Cuneiform."
"Cuneiform!? Are you sure?"
"Positive."
"Then that would mean that this door has been around since the Sumerians, that's at least 3000 years ago."
"Yes, but if you take a closer look, you will notice that some of the markings leading up to the door were obviously made by Christians, centuries later. They are warnings."
"I can see that Dr. Getly, but I can only understand the Cuneiform loosely. I think it says something about a place of safekeeping until... Doomsday... I think."
A couple of hours later, Indy and Dr. Getly were joined by a team of diggers armed with crowbars. After a little effort the door was pried open and the two Americans entered with torches. The room was empty, except for a book and an evil looking dagger on a pedestal. Dr. Getly picked up the book and looked at it closely. The cover was very unusual, it felt like a kind of leather and there was a face on the front, frozen in an agonised scream.
"Jones, we have made the discovery of the century! According to the experts something like this book should not exist!!" He opened the book. "The material in this book indicates that it was written before the Crusades, centuries older than anything else I have ever seen. This is practically impossible! There is not even a sign of deterioration." Dr. Getly excitedly turned the pages with a big smile. Then he stopped somewhere in the middle of the book, all expression left his face and his eyes became vacant.
"Dr. Getly?" Indy said, unsure of what was going on. Dr. Getly did not react, instead he spoke words with a voice and a language that was not his own. Indy only partially understood what his older college was saying and he did not like a word of it. He felt a cold shiver down his spine. Suddenly he heard screams and the sound of footsteps running away from the small chamber. Something had spooked the diggers. Before Indy had a chance to figure out why, he saw it and felt it. Air was passing by his face quickly and coolly. A gigantic vortex of wind and smoke had appeared behind the pedestal and anything that was not extremely heavy was being pulled into it. The dagger was the first thing sucked in, the book came out of Dr. Getly's hands and followed. Getly collapsed on the floor. Indy ran to his side and checked his pulse, there was none. Before he could do anything else, he felt the pull of the vortex on him and was sucked in.
***
When Indy awoke he felt like he had just fallen off a cliff while on fire. A quick check told him that nothing was broken, and miraculously, he managed to stand up. As he got his bearings, he realized it was sundown and that he was on the street of a city he had never seen before. What really surprised him though was the state of disrepair everything was in. It looked like there had not been anything alive around here for a long time. He felt a familiar shiver down his back and heard a screeching noise above him. He looked up and saw something that looked like a gargoyle. He then heard a snakelike voice that came from everywhere and nowhere at once.
-FRESH SOUL.-
The "Gargoyle" continued to circle above like a demonic vulture, while the voice continued to chant.
-FRESH SOUL FRESH SOUL FRESH SOUL FRESH SOUL FRESH SOUL-
Indy then realized that the "Gargoyle" was not alone. Three figures appeared almost out of thin air, two at the beginning of the street and one at the end. They slowly and stiffly approached. The chanting voice continued.
-FRESH SOUL FRESH SOUL FRESH SOUL FRESH SOUL FRESH SOUL-
As the figures got closer, he saw that they were not completely human, their faces were grotesque masks of evil and their eyes were milk white.
-WE'LL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL!-
Scared out of his mind. Indy drew his pistol and fired off three well aimed shots into the heads of his attackers. They dropped. The Gargoyle continued to circle and shriek. Just as Indy was about to holster his gun and be on his way, his attackers got up. The voice cackled insidiously.
-WE ARE STILL GOING TO SWALLOW YOUR SOUL! -
Knowing that he only had three shots left and that bullets were practically useless on these "things", Indy did what any red blooded American would do. He ran. The three uglies could not keep up his pace, but the Gargoyle gave chase, shrieking with sadistic glee. The voice joined in.
-FEEDING TIME! FEEDING TIME! FEEDING TIME!-
The Gargoyle swooped down, Indy expected it and ducked at the last moment. The Gargoyle growled in annoyance. Knowing that he could not keep on ducking and running all night, Indy ran into the nearest building he could find. He recognized it as a movie theatre, and he hoped that would give him a chance to escape. As he entered the lobby he stopped in front of a poster for a film and looked at the date. "Coming to Theatres in 2003." Indy felt like someone had punched him in the guts and for further torment had also kneed him in the groin. 2003. Impossible. Stuff like this only happened in books like "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", not in the real world. Before the shock had ended, two arms broke through the wall and grabbed him by the throat. He heard the voice again.
-NOWHERE TO RUN. FEEDING TIME! TIME TO SWALLOW YOUR SOUL!!!-
As Indy struggled against the iron grip, barely breathing he heard footsteps coming up from behind him and he knew that could only mean more trouble. Before everything went dark, he heard the sound of a small motor, flesh being cut, a shotgun, a various number of swears and curses, and the phrase "Hail to the King Baby!"
***
Ash was having a bad day. He had been on the hunt for a good thirty- six hours now and had not had a single bit of action. All he wanted to do was find a few nasty Deadites, dismember the hell out of them, burn the remains, and then go back to his new "home". As he wandered the streets at sundown with his trusty old "Boomstick" on his back and "Buzz" attatched to his right stump, his mind flashed back to about five years ago when he awoke from his six hundred year long sleep, only to discover that it was seven hundred years instead. He could not believe how much of a moron he could be sometimes. After his initial scare had ended he managed to get a few new parts for his Delta 88, some new clothes, repaired his weapons, and even learned about what he had missed during his extra one hundred year nap.
After a controversial election for the year 2000 U.S. Presidency, a total buffoon from a third party won the race by default. After a slew of terrorist attacks occurred, the United States and it's allies decided to ignore UN policies and attack any country that had pissed them off in the last ten years. The facts got a little murky afterwards, but judging by the wreckage and the fact that most people these days were either Survivalists, Anarchists, or hosts for Deadites, nobody had won the war, and everybody had lost. With no real place to go or job to do, Ash had decided to dedicate his life to one cause. Deadite bounty hunting. Most villages he visited were more than respectful to anyone who could bring them news, and proof that a few more Deadites no longer existed.
Ash was about to remember his first time collecting a bounty when he heard a familiar noise. It was the scream of a harpy, a winged Deadite that usually acted as a scout for a pack. Judging from the following sounds of gunfire, Ash assumed that the Deadites had run into some trouble with their prey. If he was quick and lucky, he might get a cut of the bounty. He did not like competing for his supper, but a slice of pie was better than no pie at all. After tracking them down to an old movie theatre he realized that me might get a bigger share, his fellow bounty hunter was getting the life choked out of him by a Deadite that was the size of a wrestler. He fired up Buzz, loaded up his Boomstick, and charged at the Deadite shouting his warcry "Hail to the King Baby!"
***
All was dark, and then very slowly, Indy regained consciousness. As he came to and sat up, he realized that he did not have any weapons or his hat. He was in a cave somewhere, near a campfire and his stuff was piled on the other side of it, he then noticed a man close his own age was sitting next to it. He had black hair, an unusually large chin, scars all over his face, a semi-crazed look in his eyes, and a sawed off shotgun in his hands. One of which looked like a medieval gauntlet. He had both of those crazy eyes trained on Indy.
"So tell me stranger", the man said "what's your name and where are ya from?"
"Is that gun loaded?" Indy asked.
"Yup", the stranger replied. "Now answer the question" he said in a cold threatening voice.
"Indiana, Indiana Jones. I do a lot of travelling so I'm from a bit of everywhere." The man began to chuckle.
"Indiana Jones! That sounds like something I'd name my dog. Just how drunk were your parents when they named you?" He put down his gun and began laughing.
Indy decided that this guy must be a real lunatic, so until he could get his hands on his gun or whip, he had better just play along. He decided ask his "host' what his name was and where they were exactly.
"The name is Ash, and this used to be the United States of America, and we are on the outskirts of what used to be Dearborn Michigan."
"Uhhhh, what do you mean when you say used to be?"
"Where have you been man? How could you not know what's been going on for the last one hundred years?"
"I don't even know what year it is."
"Well, to make sure that you do know, it is 2093 AD, if you go by the Roman calendar. But most people who can still count refer to this as 93 IH."
"93 IH?"
"Ninety-three years In Hell."
Indy's jaw dropped in amazement. He could hardly believe his ears. The last time he checked, the year was 1924, but according to Ash, he had travelled 169 years into the future. His mind tried to reason out how such a thing could be possible. Then he recalled what Dr. Getly had said before the vortex had appeared. From what little he could translate, he figured that Getly had said something about opening a gate through time and space.
"You have been awfully quiet for the last few minutes." Ash said after awhile. "You got something on your mind?"
"You would not believe me if I told you."
"Try me." He pushed Indy's belongings towards him as a goodwill gesture. Indy began telling his story, he told Ash about the dig, the book and dagger Getly and he had found, and how he had ended up being in the movie theatre.