GWS:Scene One part 2
Landshark and the Thing, continued
Kurt looks at the lake of liquid, wailing damnation. "Interesting," he says. He grabs a nearby SS member by the shoulder. "Pick two men, and lead them into the lake. I want to see what happens when you're fully immersed. If the area is safe, proceed to secure the fish-man's body. He will be of scientific interest."
"Yessir!" The man sees two other officers that have a grudge against him, and who happen to be standing at the edge of a railcar above the water.
He climbs up. "Ahh! Yoric. Gunter. How is it GOING!?" He suddenly bull rushes the unsuspecting officers into the water with a splash. Unfortunately, Yoric grabs him by the shirt as he falls in....
Behind the wreckage of the train, the wounded Landshark can only watch as von Marek steps up to the two who pulled the crate off the doomed train. Despite the injuries they endured in their heroic efforts, he brutally pushes them aside and scrapes the dirt away from the label.
Beside the skull and crossbones, it is with a sinking feeling that Landshark spies the name of the location to which this Thing was being taken. "Gottschlaff" he knows is the Nazi's not-so-secret underground bunker, the place they take the most dangerous and deadly of the products of their twisted research, to bury them as deep as is possible. Even the Nazi hierarchy did not wish to exploit this particular fruit of their evil investigations.
By Landshark's intervention, von Marek, not known for following orders, now seems destined to gain control of this Thing. And to what end, wonders Landshark, will this evil man use it?
Von Marek, unaware that Landshark is still alive, smirks arrogantly at the American's foolish intervention.
About von Marek, most of the Thugs who escaped the train are battered and bruised, their stomachs turned in knots by their descent from the embankment, by their lives seeming to be coming to an end.
Almost to a man, these hard, vicious and implacable thugs are put in mind of the homes they left, several summers ago, of their mothers' baking, their fathers coming home from work. Why did they ever join up, one or two of them are wondering as they sit, trying not to retch, on the turf, tears streaming down their cheeks.
The thugs stare glumly at their jackboots for a moment, and then they spot their brave leader, von Marek, smirking confidently, triumphant over his mongrel opponent. They pull themselves up and march over to their commander, and remember that they're not any thugs. They're JACKBOOTED Nazi thugs! "Sir, what are our orders?"
But behind the thugs, glaring at their shiny boots with resentment from a prone position in a pool of his own blood, a figure lifts himself to his feet with what must be the last ounces of energy left in his crushed frame. He reaches into his jacket with a grim determination.
A rictus of anguish and of triumph flashes over the man's face as he pulls his hand out from his jacket, whipping it into the junior officer's face...
"Signed by ze Fuhrer," he says as he thrusts a document under the jackbooted thug's nose, "Zis cargo must go to Gottschlaff!"
This is indeed the conductor's last act, for his legs buckle beneath him and he slumps to the floor, a slick trail of blood coating the officer's boot as he slides down the sheer leg.
"For the Fuhrer..." The thugs look at eachother and the sergeant calls his force together, and sets them to search for the Thing. "We must keep it safe, and deliver it ourselves!"
The thugs organize themselves into small teams and they comb the area for signs of the Thing. Luckily they find a trail of insect corpses into the forest. The squads descend in unison on the wolfy monstrosity, and gun it down gleefully! The thugs holler sadistically in German as they riddle Wolfy with lead.
"Auf Wiedersehen, little puppy," says the sergeant disdainfully as he approaches the chest. "We will only keep it safe for the Fuhrer, and perhaps take a peak inside...?"
The men take a look around. The forest is empty and still, save for the twitches of the (surely dying?) wolf. They move toward the chest and von Marek speaks. "Good work, men." They spin around suddenly, and he is standing there, exactly where he wasn't a second ago. "We will take that path, down toward the edge of the lake, and around it. The ... steam ... will hide our passage from any pursuers."
"But vhat of der American Landshark?" leftenant Brecht asks.
"Nothing could survive in what that lake has beome," Kurt replies dismissively.
"You mean that ... Gunther? Albrecht?" Brecht begins.
"What matters now is our duty to the fuerher," Kurt says firmly. "But rest assured, the Landshark could not possibly have survived. Nothing now stands between us and our victory."
...Kurt says firmly. "But rest assured, the Landshark could not possibly have survived. Nothing now stands between us and our victory."
Brecht hears the snap of a twig. "Was das ist?"
"LANDSHARK!" With a shout, Landshark is upon them, fists flying and elbows elbowing in a display of yankee pluck and american know-how that sends the Nazis flying! Landshark knocks Kurt von Marek into a patch of poison ivy, thumps Lieutenant Brecht upside the head, and whirls to spot...the Thing!
"I've got just the thing for you," says Landshark, as he pulls a Contraption out of his belt. The Chivalric Chondrichthyes attaches the contraption to the Thing and presses a button on its side. The contraption starts spinning and the Thing lifts up into the air! "Courtesy of Dr. Rebecca Achilles, none of you will be getting your hands on..." with a spark and a bang, the contraption explodes, dropping the Thing into some bushes a few hundred yards away. "aw, Nuts."
The thugs exchange looks as they see the American half-breed shark thing still alive, and they sneer disdainfully. Still arrayed in position, the Nazis all pop a cartridge into their rifles and open fire, forcing the Landshark to dive into the bushes. "Kill that disgusting abomination," Brecht screams, still woozy and on the ground. "And recover the Thing or I'll drop you head first into that poisoned lake myself!" The Nazis dash into the forest in two directions, to recover the Thing and kill Landshark once and for all!
The Nazis have all pulled out cigars in anticipation of their success, and chomp down on them firmly. They are battered, desperate, and in the middle of nowhere...and haven't killed anyone in days. The Nazis locate the Thing, and start to close in on Landshark as well.
They spot the Thing hanging by its silk bundling on a high branch of an evergreen tree. You can almost see the unholy emanations sizzle in dissatisfaction at it sits like a Christmas ornament. The Nazis bitch and start to climb the tree to recover the precious relic. One of the thugs almost falls out as another callously steps on his comrade's fingers. "I'll cut you open in my sleep," the slighted thug whispers.
The Nazis have pinned Landshark to a patch of shrubs in a clearing, and they are experimentally slinging bullets into the brush. "If you surrender, we will kill you quickly," the thug says through his cigar, lying unabashedly. He's got a hankerin' for some torturin'!
BOOM!
The explosion throws everyone to the floor, interrupting the Thugs' play, but then all is peace...
Even though a way off, back by the lake so it would seem, the noise was deafening and the Nazis to a man, as they pick themselves up off the floor, have thin lines of blood sliding down their cheeks from their perforated eardrums.
Looking back towards the lake, they see nothing but calm and perhaps a ripple where the DRG Reingold has sunk to its watery tomb. "Gut" says their leader, (although no-one can hear him) as he and his men turn to face Landshark, now exposed by the absence of the bush under which he had been pinned.
Grimacing with pain, the Thugs advance upon Landshark, still able to muster evil grins at the prospect of wiping the floor with this smug piece of nonsense.
But then it is Landshark who grins. And points up at the sky. And puts his fingers in his ears as with a mighty WHUMP! the engine (and some more besides) of the DRG Rheingold, falling from the sky with awhistling scream which the Nazis could not register, lands square upon the Thugs, a mighty hole in the side of its steam chamber showing where the explosion occured.
But meanwhile, the deafened thugs that are trying to get their prize catch a break from their efforts as the Thing tumbles safely to the ground. The thugs communicate in sign language, and contratulate themselves on their good fortune as they climb back down and form a circle around the Thing.... -- The engine debris, while "killing" the thugs, has started leaking even more necro-juice. The thugs stir and moan. They claw themselves out of the wreckage and hungrily glare at Landshark. "Gaargh!" The thugs lunge at Landshark, the fingers of their bones exposed from clawing their way to freedom. And in a tree nearby, another moan can be heard: alas, it's poor Yorik! A helpful explosion has freed him from the lake, and he looks a bit pale....
Landshark takes one look at the staggering zombie Nazis and then breaks for the Thing. He is able to easily outpace the shuddering undead. He's readying himself to scoop up the chest when Kurt suddenly pops right in front of him. Damn, the German just moves so fast! Where did he come from? Kurt plants both hands on Landshark's chest and shoves, pushing him back into the grasping arms of the staggering corpses of his men.
"Now this is more like it," Kurt says happily. "A little game of keep-away, is it?"
The undead thugs claw and ooze at Landshark as he wrestles, trying desperately to get free.
Once again, though, the DRG Rheingold, or rather what it has now become, intervenes...
Behind the Jackbooted Nazi Thugs, behind their evil leader, a monstrous figure has risen from the remains of the train's steamholder. Finally released from their captivity, the thousand tormented souls which had been harnessed to power the great engine, their pure anguish directed by evil Nazi cunning to generate the steam which drove the great pistons of the Pride of the Reich, are anxious for vengeance.
In a blind fury, the steaming amorphous mass of necro-juice begins to take shape. Their eyes directed at that figure of hatred, von Marek, who has himself condemned a thousand souls to death, their mass takes form behind him in a vile effigy, a gruesome doppelganger of the villainous man.
Lurching towards their target as only the risen dead know how, the very essence of the DRG Rheingold, five times taller than a man now, and incandescent with a scalding rage, swipes at the Jackbooted Thugs, knocking them all about like so many skittles, then grips von Marek by the throat, causing him to release a relieved Landshark, and with one swift bend of the newly-formed arm, places the Nazi villain inside its gaping maw, to burn in the vile ichor of hatred which he and his kind have brought into the world.
The Thing, safely ensconced in its container, sits quietly in the grove as about it all is Chaos.
Inside the hell-creature's mouth, Kurt shakes his head ruefully. "You weaklings fell before me like wheat in life. You think you'll fare any better in death? It's laughable!" He starts grabbing souls in great, wailing handfuls, and tearing them apart with his half-dead strength.
The thugs that are still alive and itching to shoot something gather themselves together around the Thing and fire their rifles en masse into the necromantic abomination. "This is for you, Gunter," a thug shouts as he fires a round into a suspiciously Gunter-like face.
As he is dragged under by the undead Nazis, Landshark spots the group of Nazi thugs surrounding the Thing. 'Can't...can't...let them get it!"
Throwing caution to the wind, Landshark leaps at the thugs surrounding the thing, carrying the undead with him. Despite the oozing and the biting of the Nazi zombies, Landshark pushes through the live Nazis, swinging his mighty fists like an aquatic Joe Louis and scattering the Nazis all over the scenery.
Landshark stops, catches his breath, and then throws the Nazi zombies off of him. He stands over the Thing and looks down at it. "This thing better be worth it."
And the shiny black cockroach finishes chewing through the pure white silk. The chest's bronze lid ominously pops open, revealing!!! NOTHING. Not the harmless nothing of open air, nor the lifeless nothing of empty space, but a NOTHING that sucks at the edges of SOMETHING around it like a tongue at the hole of a lost tooth. Distracting Landshark from his contemplation of nothing, a cold, hard, skeletal hand falls gently on his shoulder. Flinging his potential assailant away he whirls around to face every dead and and undead thing in this forest, save two. The spirit beast and Von Marek fight on, though as if in a great wind pulling them to the aid of the chest. The beast's hate and Von Marek's living half to strong for even this ancient force.
And so, the Nazis fallen to fighting among themselves, we find Landshark, a little while and several miles distant, toting the chest along, the retied silk scarf digging into his flesh. Perhaps with just one night's rest he can reach his rendezvous with the British SOE.
All's well, he thinks to himself, if only he could shake off the army of undead forest creatures lolling along behind him seemingly at his beck and call. Somehow, his possession of the chest, along with, he shudders involuntarily, along with the void within it, has given him some command over these creatures.
What could this Thing be, he wonders, and why would that train, shining pride of the Reich, be bearing it in a boxcart rather than carting the Fuhrer himself about his empire? What could be so important about this Thing that even the Nazis set to fighting among themselves over it?
Landshark cannot help but feel the chill memory of that hand that rested upon his shoulder. Finding himself speeding up, he tries to calm his racing mind as all sorts of horrors crowd into it, but he cannot and soon he is running full pelt, the chest bouncing on his hip, as he tries to flee the terror which stalks him.
One of the zombie Nazi thugs approaches Landshark. He moves with more intention than the other zombies, and his eyes focus on Landshark with a cold forceful presence that the thug certainly never had in life. The thug prostrates himself at Lanshark's feet and says with an airy whisper, "I am your vessel. I contain secrets. Bless me with a question." The zombie looks up at the American instantaneously, as though he moved too fast to see.
Landshark has a sudden, disconcerting, image of himself asking ... of himself as a person who could easily ask questions of the dead and damned, without guilt or shame. Where would it end? He imagines wining and dining the cream of hell, bantering with every abominable devil, all with the noblest intentions, of course.
He'd look good in a black leather trench-coat. Is he really so different from Von Marek?
Landshark shakes his head. There's no time for such foolish fantasies. He knows that the American way is too pure to ever devolve to the depths of Naziism. Secure in his patriotism, Landshark makes it over the crest of the low mountain and spots the ribbon of blue he was looking for! With a mad dash (perhaps a bit too mad?) Landshark runs to the edge of a ridge and leaps down into the river!
The Elegant Elasmobranchii speeds through the waters of the river like a man possessed, until at last he swims out into the sea. "This is what I needed after that grisly business,...a good swim to clear my mind." Getting his bearings, Landhsark looks around in the dark waters, but sees nothing. He reaches out with his mental powers and contacts a shiver of sharks. The sharks let Landshark know that they've detected an enormous fish with their electroreception, and Landhsark heads over. The sharks have spotted his contact, a British submarine! Landshark knocks on the side of the sub *shave and a haircut* and the torpedo tube opens. Landshark shoves the Thing into the torpedo tube and knocks again *two bits* and the tube closes. As the British submarine captain orders the sub to pull out, the crew hear a shout of joy ring throughout the sub as if it were coming from every direction and a smile spreads across every face on the sub. Murphy and Schulz share a flask of whiskey in the engine room in celebration.
As Landshark floats with the shiver of sharks, watching the British sub speed away into the dark, bound for its rendezvous with Doc Achilles and the rest, he breathes a sigh of rellief and seawater. "At least this terrible experience is finally over once and for all" he thinks, rubbing a shark behind the gills completely unaware of the swarm of swimming undead things finally catching up behind him.
Suddenly out of the dark sea Landshark sees a flash of light like lightning from the direction the sub left in. A sound like thunder, then the sucking rumble of an implosion follows close behind it.
Landshark dives toward the sub, hoping to find it only damaged, or at the very least some survivors. He finds its listing hulk diving away toward the sea bed, a hole the size of a tank blown in its side. In the murk he sees bodies alternately floating and flailing out of the the hole. As he watches, the tower hatch is blown, releasing a group of wayward submariners. Rushing to them he sees two of them stop swimming, choking and blowing huge bubbles out of their open mouths. Quite last cries of the dead.
Landshark rushes as many of the survivors as he can to the surface. Luckily the sub wasn't deep enough to require a slow ascent to the surface.
Bringing the last man to the surface, Landshark finds a powerful storm is brewing over the site of the sub's demise. Landshark dives after the plummeting sub, intent on doing... something, though whether it be casting the chest into an undersea abyss, or returning it to Dr. Achilles, is uncertain. He sees the sub strike the muddy bottom, plowing through for several meters, then coming to rest. Suddenly there is a crack like thunder again, and a bolt lightning strikes the sediment next the sub, sending up coruscations of murk.
More bolts fall as Landshark approaches the sub. It is like someone took the idea of a lightning bolt and just put it underwater. The effect is very disconcerting on a less than conscious level.
Landshark takes a moment to reflect upon the arrogance of a man who would think to control something like this ... and the evil of thinking to unleash it on others. But then he returns his focus to the task at hand.
As Landshark sits in the water, he smells what a shark looks for above all, flesh. But this flesh rankles the sharks in his company, and he knows that this flesh is unnatural. Then he sees something glisten in the water. It's a pin with a red and black swastika.
His zombie vessel moves in unnerving bursts of necrotic energy towards him. "Lord," he says with clarity in the water, "My knowledge is yours to command. It matters not if you've sent it to your friends for research. I know your destiny. You were chosen. I can help you."
"You can help me? Ok..." Landshark acts as if he's about to ask the undead thing a question. The abomination against all that is holy leans in for the question and then...Wham! Landshark punches him so hard that his head goes flying out of the water.
Even as Landshark watches, savoring his decision to rebuke the zombie, the lightning storm starts to pull in on itself. It sucks the bodies of the dead of the submarine into itself. They wither and blacken as they go, and Landshark can see their flickering remaining life-force pulsing as the chest tries desperately to extend its field of death far enough to absorb yet more life.
"My God," Landshark realizes, swimming out of the circle of destruction, "It consumes life and turns it into death. A little explosion when it devoured the zombies ... a bigger one with the crew of a whole submarine."
"The Nazis would unleash it in the middle of a city," he realizes. A chill runs up his spine.
The chill moves into his brain. Landshark can feel the unholy energies of the Thing wrapping themselves around his mind. His thoughts become more and more the thoughts not just of a shark, but of the Dread that lies under the waters that a shark is a mere reflection of. He feels himself seperating from reality as reality's dark edges start to fray...and then he feels it. Landshark's special serum starts to wear off. Devon McWilliams is himself again. Unfortunately, he is himself 30 feet underwater. The loss of its host quiets the Thing again and the undead Nazis revert to merely dead Nazis and float to the surface.
Devon swims up to the surface as fast as possible, and breaks the surface gasping for air. He vomits seawater and reminds himself (once again) never to let the change overtake him while underwater. Pressing the stud on his wristwatch, Landshark sends an active sonar pulse into the water. A few minutes later, U-Boy arrives! "U-Boy! Am I glad to see you."
"What is it, Landshark? Do you need an extra dose?"
"No, U-Boy. I'm not sure what would happen if I turned back into Landshark. I need you to go down there and find a small chest. We need to bring it back to Doc Achilles, and your robot form is ideally suited to the task."
"Will do, Landshark!" And with a quick flip, U-Boy swims down to the bottom of the ocean and picks up the chest. The Thing makes a weak attempt to pervert U-Boy, but its mystical power has no influence over his vacuum tubes. He places the chest in his torso cavity, locks it, and swims back to pick up Landshark.
And so, the Thing is handed over to Doc Achilles' crack team of researchers, but what will become of our hero, the Titanic Tiburon? Will Devon ever be able to take on the heroic form of Landshark again without turning into a Chondrichthyes Cthulhoid? Find out in a later installment of,... Landshark!
