“Keep it under there!” Paskow yelled as he ran to the opposite side of the bridge. Paskow let loose a blast of fire a moment later. “It’s coming back your way!” The thing’s wailing peaked, hit an octave that was too human. Hennessey greeted it with flame the instant it poked out.
Then the shooting started. A stuttering fusillade of bullets peppered the bridge, knocking razor-sharp chips of masonry loose with their impact. Somewhere across the river, the freakish townsfolk were rallying to the defense of their aquatic angel. One slug missed the fuel hose on Hennessey’s flamethrower by about half an inch. Both Marines dropped to their knees.
“Did you see where it—oh fuck!” Paskow cut himself short. The white phosphorous grenade clipped to his belt was missing its spoon. It had been shot away in the hail of bullets. The fuse was lit on Charlie Paskow. With two grenades, a satchel charge of TNT, and at least forty pounds of gasoline on his back, it pretty much meant Hennessey was fucked, too.
Charlie stood up and, without even meeting Hennessey’s horrified gaze or uttering a word, vaulted over the side of the bridge. Neither the creature nor Charlie Paskow had time to scream.
Hennessey was thrown face down on the stones by the concussion. Twin fireballs rolled out from either side of the bridge, flashing the snow and ice into steam and blackening Hennessey’s white winter greatcoat. Forcing himself up onto his knees, his bones still ringing with the blast, Hennessey immediately thought, I hope Charlie’s okay. With shame and horror, he realized then that he was alone. No, not alone. Those fuckers who’d killed Charlie were out there somewhere.
Hennessey shrugged the tanks of fuel off his back and cast around for a discarded weapon. There were plenty to be had. Spotting a Lewis Gun that still had a magazine loaded, he pulled it to him by its barrel sheath. He checked the drum-pan magazine. Not jammed. Never even fired. He poked his head over the bridge’s upstream wall for a second. The shots came fast, from somewhere downstream. The Marsh Refinery. Hennessey scrambled to the opposite side of the bridge and hugged the wall. He poked his head up again and this time at least three rifles opened up on him. Still, the shots did little more than reveal their positions. The snipers were on the roof, no doubt huddled together for safety. Good, Hennessey thought warmly. Grouped nice and tight.
Hennessey crawled forward about ten yards and then came up again, this time with the Lewis Gun. He balanced the bi-pod the bridge’s stone railing as a bullet bit the masonry right in front of him. He had his sight picture and then he opened up. Hennessey’s first burst got him his range to the refinery’s roof, the second found the snipers’ roost. Then he poured it on. All three flopped like rag-dolls. One lost his weapon over the side.
More weapons opened up on his position from the black shuttered windows and doorways across the Manuxet. Hennessey had forgotten all about dying. He was too angry. Angry that these things had wiped out his platoon. Angry that he’d shit his pants with fear. Angry that Charlie was dead. Angry that he’d felt bad for killing the basement family of abominations. Hennessey wound his clock springs and went to work.
First, the one on the crumbling roof at the corner of Fall Street. Then the two down by the shore to the right. Then the one in the doorway nearly a hundred yards along Federal Street. A hunched thing broke for cover on the left and got about two hopping steps. Then back to Federal Street, where four of them tried to advance around the burning debris from the Esoteric Order of Dagon. Then another at the window a block over on Church Street.
Now they were running, turning tail and running. Just like Hennessey had minutes before. Running like women. But not from a monster. Not from a living mountain of shit that gobbled men and shrugged off bullets. No. They’re running from me! Hennessey thought. They’re afraid of me!
“Run!” he screamed, laughing. “Run!” He held the trigger down and chewed the rest of the magazine up in seconds. “Run, you fuckers!”
Somewhere he could hear a Browning machine gun chattering away. Turning back around, he felt a little disappointed to see the bridge filled with Marines, all of them firing past him and advancing by squads. All around him Marines were firing and charging forward. Suddenly two grabbed him by his numb arms and began to pull him back to the south bank.
Are we winning? he thought, and then blearily asked the question aloud to a Marine on his right.
“Jay’sus, lad!” the guy sounded like they’d just whisked him out of County Kildair. “If’n we aren’t, it’ll be no fault’a yore own. Who’dya think yar? Sah’gent Yark?”
“What’re you talkin’ about?”
“’Bout half the battalion saw you two on the bridge,” said a mustached Marine sergeant, grinning foolishly. “I heard the old man himself say you fellas looked like Horatius times two out there. He’ll want to see you after you’re fixed up.” Some kind of triage station had been set up behind the First National Grocery. Hennessey was gently lowered to the ground. “Congressional Medal of Honor, f’sure,” the grinning sergeant said. “You just sit tight and a corpsman’ll be ’long t’check you out, okay?” Hennessey could do little more than dumbly nod his assent. The night was passing like a blur. Someone came and looked him over, but Hennessey had no idea whether the guy was checking him for wounds or rummaging through his pockets. Sometime later he noticed that his face and neck were burned, and his greatcoat was actually smoldering. He leapt to his feet to shrug off the flamethrower before he exploded like a Roman candle, but suddenly remembered he’d ditched it back on the bridge.
Swaying on his feet, Hennessey could see that he was not alone in the square. It had become a sort of rally point for the battalion. Trucks were rolling in and out. Wounded and dead were being sorted in front of the Gilman Hotel. And there on the southernmost side, two Marines with trench guns were standing guard over twenty or so battered-looking townsfolk.
It only took a few seconds for Hennessey to cross the square to the prisoners. As Hennessey walked along the knot of men and women, he carefully studied each of the bloated, inhuman faces. The only thing he saw in their fat, bulging eyes was hatred. From the mother clutching a wailing brat to her fat breasts, to the men, tattered, bloodied, and bruised from the beatings the Marines had given them, all Hennessey saw was red-rimmed hatred. They didn’t hate the Marines for burning their temples and smashing their idols. They hated them for what they were: normal, clean, and human.
Hennessey didn’t want their hate. He wanted their fear.
He returned a few minutes later with a Thompson he got off a dead Marine at the triage station and killed them all. The two Marines who had been guarding the civilians were so shocked they almost let him load a second drum into the Thompson before they tackled him and wrestled the empty weapon away. Hennessey was cuffed and placed under arrest.
Major Walsh, the battalion’s commanding officer, was a bit disappointed that his nominee for the Congressional Medal of Honor was now a “baby-killing sonuvabitch.” But, as Hennessey heard one of the T-men explain to the Major, “How’re you going to court-martial the man when none of this ever happened and we were never here?”
Later Hennessey was taken under guard to the Battalion HQ outside Innsmouth. He sat and watched a mortar battery dump hundreds of shells onto the north side of town where things were still flopping and twisting in the rubble. Next a convoy of motor coaches arrived. Hennessey watched as Navy doctors carefully examined the captured townsfolk and directed them onto the waiting buses. Some people got to go on the buses on the right; others were sent to the left. To Hennessey the folks going to the left seemed a good deal more squamous.