THE SPIRALING WORM
000./ Introduction
C.J. Henderson
You know, no one ever reads these things, not even the authors of the books in which they appear, so Im thinking, what the hell, why not get something off my chest about these two guys. Whats it going to hurt -- right?
001./ Made of Meat
David Conyers
He walked through the village unmolested, up a muddy road, realized that he was still nude and that he didnt care. For some reason he felt powerful, as if he could smite anyone. Once hed been made of meat, but not any more. Now he was something more durable, something more ancient.
In the Asian jungle, Major Harrison Peel knows that he is fighting a loosing war against Tcho-Tcho terrorists. They know Peels every move, efficiently eliminating his agents under his very nose. Peel seeks the aid of a Vietnam War veteran who provides him with the intelligence he desperately requires to bring his enemy's reign to an end, or so he thinks.
002./ To What Green Altar
John Sunseri
Later, Dixon would be able to nearly convince himself that what happened had had a logical explanation. Some scientific reason that he just didnt understand, perhaps because hed barely managed to get through his physics classes at Southern Illinois, perhaps because hed never had the temper, patience or ordered mind for the physical disciplines, perhaps because he and Figgs had been hallucinating.
In Siberia, Middle Eastern cultists slaughter every single employee at a remote Russian mine. In London, NSA agent Jack Dixon is called to the aid of MI6, to investigate this attack, and to uncover its connection to the 1908 Tunguska explosion. A trail leads to the Vatican City, where the summoning of an elder god could force a global religious war between Muslims and Christians.
003./ Impossible Object
David Conyers
Between the four walls, the floor and the ceiling there was the metal desk, her chair, a spare chair... and the impossible object. Shed been locked in the room for twenty minutes now, and in all that time she had done nothing but watch the last item, the alien device that could not be explained.
An alien city has been unearthed in the outback desert of Western Australia. The government's investigation of its ruins found nothing of value, except for one strange artifact, the Impossible Object, which no one can describe or classify. Harrison Peel, head of security, hopes to discover its purpose, before more researchers fall foul to its unpredictable properties, or are erased from existence altogether.
004./ False Containment
David Conyers
Hed seen his fair share of indigenous art in his time, thought nothing of it. But each depiction here disturbed Peel. He couldnt even say why, except that their stylized forms appeared warped and mutated, twisting the anatomies beyond any natural angle. Then he noticed that all their eyes looked down on the sandy earth, toward the center, where perhaps three dozen Aboriginal skeletons were piled on top of each other, suggesting a mass grave.
Harrison Peel travels from Central Australia to Thailand, Los Angeles and then into the deserts of Nevada, spurred on by a strange encounter with a very familiar individual bearing disturbing news, his own self from the future. Toxic and nuclear waste is materializing all over the world, and Peel is convinced its source is a new waste treatment plant in Nevada, utilizing technology of great interest to the Pentagon, and derived from knowledge offered freely by the Impossible Object.
005./ Resurgence
John Sunseri
It was a creature created to move through liquid - it slid easily through the cold, brackish seas, undulating its bulk in smooth patterns like wind on waves, occasionallyl shooting out a pseudopod when it passed nearby a school of fish or a shark, taking in whatever protein was within easy reach, dissolving bone, flesh and cartilage with enzymatic squirts of jelly, devouring the resultant broth.
The monstrous shoggoths of Antarctica are waking, they are hungry, and the icy wastelands of their home offer little nourishment. Freed from their incarceration as slaves to the ancient alien race of the Elder Things, they now advance northwards. In Argentina, Dixons expertise is called upon to defeat a bold shoggoth, destroying it with a nuclear weapon. Facing a similar foe in Australia, Peel is not so lucky, for no one in his or the American government will provide him with the weapon he needs, fearful of the political ramifications if a nuclear bomb is detonated on Australian soil. Meanwhile, the shoggoth draws closer.
006./ Weapons Grade
David Conyers
Seeing it through thick bullet-proof glass, trapped in its own special prison, was what made Peels eyes water and his teeth chatter, because he never once expected to witness this creature to react to its containment by bellowing and howling. It was an alien expressing a very human emotion: pain. What was worse was that it did so with not a single mouth, but hundreds, and they were all screaming.
After suffering severe radiation poisoning after his encounter with a shoggoth in Sydney, Peel is dying. He hopes to go quietly, but Dixon calls upon Peels expertise, dragging him to Utah, Antarctica and finally another universe, to secret US bases where Dixons government has long been studying the properties of shoggoths. Meanwhile, an Israeli spy hopes to steal a tissue sample of a shoggoth, only to be defeated by Peel as they pass between dimensions. Strange outcomes abound, one is saved, and the other becomes something that is no longer human.
007./ The Spiraling Worm
David Conyers & John Sunseri
He saw one of the soldiers the one who had shot Tanias rapist last night have his head exploded like a rotten melon by a withering cannonade by a razor-toothed leering scarecrow of a man with ripped gaping holes in his biceps.
In the dead heart of Africa, deep within the jungle hell that is the untouched Congo Basin, evil stirs. The ancient cult of the Spiraling Worm is building an army hell bent on restoring the powers of the elder gods. A team of British and American Special Forces, led by Peel and Dixon, are sent into Africa. They soon discover that they are betrayed, by both a US officer who was abandoned to the cult many years ago, and an MI6 agent corrupted by power. Together these two foes are aiding the Spiraling Worm, to fulfill the cults desire of releasing their god, which they can only achieve with the powerful arsenal of the US government.
000./ Afterword
The Authors
Collections like this one often come together through amorphous origins. How did two writers whove never met, who live at opposite ends of the world and dont share conducive time zones, come together a write a series of interconnected stories?
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