Sorry for the wait guys! I hope you guys enjoy this spoopy holiday special a day late. lol
IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD HALLOWEEN SPECIAL:
THE VOID POURS FORTH
Philadelphia, the capital of the once mighty Republican Union, was in tattered ruins, it's shell-pocked avenues and streets cluttered and covered with the debris of countless collapsing buildings. The gunfire could only barely suppress the the horrific cacophony of countless screams of the dying and the yet to die. From the Capital Dome, where angry flickering flames licked up to the Heaven which had yet to answer the fervent and needy prayers of countless Fundamentalist patriots, to the Great World War Memorial on Fleet Street, where the dying and wounded huddled before its mirror-finish surface emblazoned with the names of those gone so long. As the battle raged on, thousands of survivors all over the city clutched at their children and their Bibles, desperate for hope. Desperate for it all to stop. Hell had unleashed. It was Armageddon, and the Final Battle was raging.
To the east, out of the shroud of fog that hung like funeral drapes over the mighty Delaware River, strode the Leviathan. It's head was a mass of writhing pollops and tentacles unlike anything ever imagined in the wildest fever-dreams of a mortal man. On its back were two enormous bat-like wings, festooned with algae and muck from the sea. It's green skin consisted of innumerable scales covering its entire body until the hands and feet descended into mighty claws. As it stepped onto the sacred soil of the New Jerusalem, it reared back its hideous approximation of a head, opened its monstrous, tendril-covered mouth, and let loose a scream which shook the stars. Windows burst from the booming of its thunderous voice. Soldier and civilian alike clenched their teeth to the point of shattering as the sonic blast hit them. Many stumbled through the streets, clutching bleeding ears. Others held aloft crosses, begging for Jehovah to finally intervene and end this madness. The Leviathan took another step forward, crushing buildings like twigs underneath those claws.
From the south came the Valkyries, hideous screeching winged creatures with the bodies of apes and adorned with bat-like wings, like the Leviathan, but featuring monstrous beaks where the mouths should have been. Their eyes were bright, other-worldly blue and their skin was a sickly, washed-out hue of gray. They swooped down over the city, snatching up civilians and soldiers alike with their wicked hands, tearing them to pieces before dropping the corpse parts over the city. Where there was only one Leviathan, there were thousands of Valkyries. They howled and bayed gleefully as they tore a swathe of destruction to the very heart of the city. Ad-hoc defenses formed out of rubble and autos and manned by ORRA and RUMP troopers were useless. Anti-aircraft batteries opened up on the infernal nightmares, barely phasing them. They came lunging down to earth, grabbing the defenders of the walls and hurling them like baseballs into the air. Even the landships were almost useless, the treaded war-machines bogged down in the rubble and could no longer easily maneuvre through the streets. Most of them were abandoned by their crews as the formerly eternally-loyal ORRA boys could no longer withstand the ferocious and other-worldly assault on their senses.
How had it all happened? It could be all traced to the disgusting rituals and macabre longings of the Council of Jehovah to open up a gateway to the "Other Side." That mysterious Order had done the unthinkable, summoning up the great beasts with the power of Enochian magick and now they were paying the price. The balance had been upended. The lines which separated the spiritual from the physical were gone. Like a dam bursting, the forces of monstrous evil now flooded the world with unceasing terror and destruction. Society was collapsing in an instant. A once proud and mighty empire was being torn to ribbons in mere seconds. All the greatest efforts of a boastful and conceited nation were turning to dust.
Joe Steele watched the madness unfolding from the porch of the Presidential Mansion. He had earlier refused to cower in a bunker, as it would merely serve to trap him underground to die a long, terrible death. If death was to come, it should take him now, as a man standing in the open, accepting the inevitable fate that lay before him. He was not alone. Next to him was the Supreme Chief of ORRA, George Patton, proudly standing on his braces, ready to die upright. They were joined by a few more hardliners, such as Ryan Harvey Hendrick. But they weren't dying without some modicum of revenge. Earlier, Steele had given the orders to ORRA Task Force 6, a secret unit he himself established just for one special purpose: to eradicate the Council of Jehovah and the Reverend-Colonel on his order if they ever showed signs of disloyalty or recklessness. Hopefully they had murdered those cultist bastards as soon as this all began.
Rather than be at their priory in the Poconos, at the Tobias Institute, the Council was in town for the ceremonies which had broken the Veil and opened up the shamanic gateways to the Void. Rather than the Angels of the Lord, these "Voidlings" had sprung forth. They had performed the Enochian Rites of the Prophet in the basement sepulcher of the First Fundamentalist Church in downtown Philadelphia, not far from Independence Hall. They had use the mummified heart of the Prophet himself in the sacrament, burning it within a bowl forged into the likeness of a crown of thorns that sat upon an altar draped in purple silk and black muslin. Voices, ethereal and wretched, had risen from the dank, musty tombs of the embalmed Patriot-Saints, from Washington to Arnold. As the Councilmen chanted the Rites, sealed doors opened and shamblers from the dark stepped forth, darting back and forth in the shadows not pierced by the mere flickering candlelight of the altar. The Fathers of the Union had returned to Life. The Council chanted and danced in a circle about Reverend-Colonel Sunday. Barechested and covered in tattooed Enochian script, he bowed before the burning heart of the Prophet, muttering obscene blasphemies to God and Man as the dark forces of the Void consumed his being. His eyes glowed the same daemoniac blue of the Valkyries, and his bones seemed to creak in a most unnatural fashion as he hunched over ever further to the stone floor.
The shamblers from the shadows stepped forth into the light as the chanting grew louder. The withered, skeletal body of Father Washington maneuvered through the dancing circle, his musty blue uniform still adorned and festooned with medals and laurels of centuries past. He was soon joined by Daniel Shays, Father Abraham, and the Martyr Arnold. Each moldy, moth-eaten corpse staggered into position around the Reverend-Colonel. Insidious words and guttural noise emanated from mouths of the undead. Sunday took a black book, of a wretched and surely ancient origin, and began to read from it, still huddled before the altar.
"Dominus enim magni haud-ut-esse-nominavit, invocamus nomen tuum, ut mundent terram potestas!"
What followed was a screeching that sent even the most wicked and hardline Councilmen to the floor in shock and horror. The sound peeled through the sepulcher like a blast from the unholiest pit of Hell itself and the Fathers of the Union descended upon the Reverend-Colonel like starving hyenas, ripping his flesh and forking it into their skeletal mouths, blood and his Pinnacle Fluids running down their funeral garb.
At that moment, as the Reverend-Colonel clutched his ancient tome and accepted his fate, the doors of the sepulcher flew open with a bang, and the bodies of Church Zealots hit the floor, riddled with bullets. Task Force 6 stormed in, rifles blasting. As the brass casings clattered on the floor, the Councilmen began to fountain red streams, streaking and soaking the stone floor. Once they saw the living dead, however, the guns fell silent. Over the bodies of the Councilmen stood the Fathers of the Union, covered in the blood of the Reverend-Colonel.
"Fall back! Fall back!" shrieked an officer with a shrill and piercing voice. Several men, hardened veterans and executioners all, collapsed from the shock of such an unholy sight. The rest turned tail and ran as fast as they could. Seconds later, the tomb filled with an unearthly sound, as if millions of clambering demons and apes were congregating and shrieking into the darkness. A sonic blast hit the capital, its epicenter at the First Fundamentalist Church. The Fathers of the Union stepped into the sunlight, arms outstretched. Washington and Lincoln together hurled a ball of color unlike any on earth into the sky, an explosive orb of ectoplasm, and it ruptured into the noontime sky.
That was when it began. When that monstrous claw of the Leviathan snapped a destroyer in the harbor like a twig. When the Valkyries descended. When the dead walked the earth. The Martyr Arnold carried with him that black book out of the tomb. The Book of Eibon was the most vile and charnel of all the tomes Mr. Tobias had procured in his lifetime. Daniel Shays followed suit, carrying the flaming crown of thorns bearing the heart of the Prophet. This was the day of reckoning. The day the world would end. The day all the mightiest efforts of the Pinnacle Race would be destroyed and obliterated like a sandcastle at high tide. The day the tenebrous barriers ruptured and let the Void pour forth its horrors upon the mightiest works of man.
Joe Steele watched as the swarms of Valkyries approached, heading right for him and his loyalists. They raised their sidearms and rifles and let loose volley after volley. In seconds, they were upon them. Patton's head was ripped from his shoulders and his body rolled down the steps of the Mansion. Hendrick drew his officer's saber and thrust it directly through the skull of one of the squamous abominations, bringing it down with a thud on top of him. Others descended down, ripping him apart as he laid trapped under the beast. At long last, Joe Steele felt his pistol's magazine empty, and he drew his ceremonial dagger and charged forward. He felt a claw rip through his throat. The dagger, emblazoned with inscriptions of his greatest victories, fell to the ground with indignity, another soon to be forgotten relic of the human race.
Joe Steele woke with a scream before jumping out of bed, drenched in sweat, heart pounding out of his chest. He was in his striped nightgown, inside the safety of the Presidential Mansion. His wife Millicent looked horrified and terrified as she woke and asked what was wrong with the utmost urgency in her voice. Three guards, members of Steele's Wolf Pack, stormed into the bedroom, weapons drawn.
"Your excellency!" bellowed a guard, waving his sidearm rabidly around the room, looking for threats. "Are you and the missus safe?!"
Steele collected himself. He was the man of steel. No mere nightmare would reduce him to this level. "Yes... yes, I am fine. Just a... bad dream. Horrible dream. It's nothing, soldier. You may return to your duties."
The soldiers looked skeptical, having never seen the President bothered by anything. Slowly, they saluted, backed out of the room, and closed the mighty double oak doors to the suite.
Joe Steele didn't get anymore sleep that night. It was already almost 5 am. Today was Thanksgiving, October 31st, and he'd be expected at the Union Banquet Hall in Plymouth soon. Later he'd give a radio address to the nation, the first Thanksgiving of Operation Manifest Climax. But as he sat in the Banquet Hall, nibbling on a turkey leg, he kept shifting his eyes to that lecherous weasel Sunday, who sat directly to his left, Patton being on his right. What secrets might the Church withhold from the government? Was this nightmare a warning from the paranormal? His Pinnacle Fluids speaking to him of degenerate activity among the clergy? He would find out, by damn. He would bring it up to Patton later. The Church was about to be purged....