Yet nothing remained to destroy; nothing for the supersonic gust to knock over.
Once the wind slowed and the fine grains of debris that had been a town and its defenders drifted to earth in a coating of brown, black, and red dust, the army of Voggoth marched forward once more. A wave of mechanical Roachbots joined the Ghouls and Mutants at the front of the army aimed at down town St. Louis.
23. Time Redux
Voggoth filled the chamber, rising between the two containment orbs where the Nix squirmed and boiled sending energy bolts between them. The universe’s original monster towered above father and son. The threats and words of discouragement spoken through the lips of Danny Washburn gone; replaced by a gigantic writhing mountain of venom and anger.
Trevor retreated a step, shocked by the creature in the temple that came as close to Voggoth’s true form as the physical universe would allow. The surface of the thing shimmied as if liquid, yet held together as if solid. He could not comprehend its composition except knowing with a certainty in his soul that the being before him was comprised as much of hatred as any form of matter.
In an instant, Trevor knew he had miscalculated. Too horrible. Too powerful. Too alien in every sense of the word. His instincts screamed run, run, run! but the image of Voggoth so disorientated his puny human mind that he could not move. His body locked in inaction; his thoughts scrambled with fear and revulsion.
Voggoth did-nothing.
The mountainous mass postured as if preparing to roll over the petty humans-tendrils sprouted, uncurled and threatened to strike-but did not.
The skin-if that’s what it could be called-of the devil rolled and bubbled; faces of countless victims pushed from beneath as if begging release. But the master of Armageddon did not strike.
Jorgie Benjamin Stone-the nine year old boy holding a stuffed animal-stepped toward Voggoth.
Trevor found an anchor to reality in his son. He squinted his eyes and focused on JB, ignoring everything else in the chamber as best he could. And while the synapses of his mind continued to misfire, Trevor managed to see what happened with enough clarity to understand.
“You-are-empty,” the child said in a plain, matter-of-fact voice that resonated in Trevor’s thought process like a huge stone splashing into a stream of confusion.
“Jorgie,” Trevor mumbled with the aim of telling his son to ‘stay back’. But he stopped the warning as he saw the false-God tremble at the boy’s approach.
That current of disorientation inside Trevor’s head abated. The confusion-the fear-the revulsion dissipated because they were never real. Just another parlor trick from the master manipulator: the only cards Voggoth could play in the universe of the living.
JB dropped his plush bunny. The rabbit and its tightly-wrapped blanket fell to the temple floor. With both arms free, Jorgie lunged at Voggoth, reaching with open hands.
“I am life,” he said with an obstinate tone worthy of the most stubborn child.
His human flesh touched the abomination. Life collided with anti-life. The energy of the living rushed to fill the void. The giant shivered. A flash came from the point of contact. Jagged bolts of power engulfed the massive entity and conducted across its being and merged with the forces emanating from the captive Nyx.
Trevor stepped toward his son as those waves of energy engulfed the boy. But while Voggoth shriveled and thrashed as if trying to escape, Jorgie basked in the light of the discharge. The touch had released a power within. A power that overwhelmed the monster and engulfed the orbs above.
An image of perfect black-of someplace devoid of light-formed in the vortex between the contained Nyx. The false-god collapsed upon itself, spinning and shrinking and finally slipping out of the universe, chased from the world of the living by the touch of a child.
“Jorgie! Jorgie!”
Energy crackled around JB, stretching to the temple heights in continuous bolts and surrounding the pair of spheres up there. Those spheres splintered and fell apart. The oily-black Nyx escaped, stretching toward the boy like predators leaping at prey.
Trevor’s son kept his hands aloft. Energy filled the temple, forcing his father to drop to the ground and cover his head. That energy stopped the diving Nyx in mid-air. The cloud-creatures froze in place, captured again not by a physical barrier but by the force radiating from Jorgie.
“Father! I can feel it, Father! I am-I am becoming whole…”
Trevor took to a knee and gazed with wide-eyed wonder at the power his son wielded. The energy strands between the creatures formed a bridge again, and once more images of the past played.
“It’s still open, Father.”
Jorgie did not appear in pain, but a look of stress draped over the boy’s face, as if he held aloft a great weight but one supported by his mind, not muscles.
The Nyx struggled against these new bonds but could not gain freedom.
“He was taking from before, Father-reaching back and bringing his monsters here-he was cheating, Father. He was breaking the rules!”
The portal in the buzzing lines of energy opened to a waterfront of shops and restaurants and the baseball stadium named Camden Yards. The city of Baltimore. Those storefronts and parks teemed with monsters from the void. Trevor remembered Reverend Johnny finding and exterminating one of The Order’s outposts in that city.
Trevor realized-given another moment Voggoth would have pulled those monsters from Baltimore and deposited them outside the temple as reinforcements for the ongoing battle. Shepherd and Johnny would have found nothing; just like his Generals had found empty cities in Cincinnati, Oklahoma City, Dallas, and Grand Forks when they had expected to find hordes of Voggoth’s forces.
The history they lived when finding those empty cities came from Voggoth’s action in the here and now; in the temple: what the Gods of Armageddon had referred to as ‘local linear time’ on this Earth-humanity’s host world-when Trevor eavesdropped on their gathering last year.
He understood.
“Jorgie, listen,” he spoke calm but firmly to his son; a difficult task given the chamber full of energy, the Nyx trying to pounce, and his son’s fascination with the power surge. “You’re a link in the chain! You have already done this. You have to do it now or everything will change.”
The image morphed to a view of the present. Outside the temple, lines of European infantry slowly retreated before the horde protecting the structure. Armand’s FAMAS rifle fired round after round slaughtering monsters wholesale but too many remained. Artillery positions on the ridge were overrun-motorcycle cavalry charged desperately into the advance but could not stem the tide.
“I don’t understand.”
“You have to do what Voggoth did. You can go back, Jorgie. You are the ark!”
The boy absorbed what his father said and as he did his eyes widened with a revelation and with fear.
“Father-he said he went looking for Mother. That bad Missionary Man-he said he went looking for Mother to kill her and me while I was in her belly.”
Trevor stood. He felt pinpricks against his skin and the hairs on his arms stood straight like needles.
“Then save her, JB. You have to go back and save her or you will never exist and none of this will have happened.”
“I don’t-I don’t know if I can.”
“You are in control, JB. Concentrate and use your mind to go back-farther than Voggoth went-go back to the beginning.”
His son’s face contorted with concentration and frustration.
“Easy, Jorgie.”
“I can’t reach it-it’s there but I can’t reach it-it’s like I’m being blocked!”
Trevor glanced up at the rumbling black clouds. They struggled in the grip of the energy field-and against the child’s will.
Trevor narrowed his eyes and urged, “Take it from them, Jorgie. It’s time to be strong-stronger than them. If
